


fear no fate: origins

by timequakes



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: Gen, Origins
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-06
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2017-12-10 14:25:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 47,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/787064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timequakes/pseuds/timequakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>everybody starts somewhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I won't be doing EVERYONE'S origin story, but some of them are important to the main storyline, so this is where I'll post the loosely-connected oneshots of some characters' origins. Alex's in particular gets a little bit gross; if reading about mild gore bothers you don't scroll any further~

Being a college graduate is equal parts freeing and terrifying.

Alex has her degree hanging in her apartment where she can see it as soon as she walks in- Political Economy BA from Columbia- but when she’s walking from interview to interview it doesn’t help her much. 

“Think of it this way,” one aggressively well-meaning potential employer tells her, after she’s been turned down, “sure, you have an impressive degree from a top-rate school, but so do thousands of other young, attractive people. What makes you different?”

She doesn’t know. The longer she thinks about it the more she feels like there’s /nothing/ that sets her apart from anyone else. She feels like a whitecap crest on a wave of hundreds of faceless graduates looking for a job.

…

It’s weird being far from home and away from her friends. Everyone else she was close with moved back- or moved away- from school; she’s the only one who stayed to try her luck at finding a job in the big city. Allie’s the only one she knows, and Allie wasn’t even any kind of econ major. She’s leaving, anyway. She talks about it incessantly.

“I’m just tired of the weather and the people. And the city.”

“So you’re tired of everything,” Alex laughs into her coffee, and Allie shrugs.

“Yeah. I mean- well, yeah. Not you. You can come move to Panama City with me.”  
“The sand in Panama is plastic.”

Allie ignores her, stirring her tea. They’re not super close, just friends through a friend, but this coffee date with Allie is the first time Alex has actually spoken in person to another human being besides those she’s trying to work for in a week. And soon even Allie will be gone, eyes set on the sunny coastline. 

“How’s the job thing going?”

Alex quirks an eyebrow and tries to make her answer as nonchalant as possible.

“I’ll let you know when there is one.”

…

There isn’t one.

She can’t think of a single good reason why she keeps getting turned down except that there’s nothing special about her at all. She tries curling her hair, or straightening it; she buys the trendiest clothes she can find and the most professional; she practices her ‘interview’ smile in the mirror until her face hurts but no matter what she changes, one thing remains constant: the ‘no’.

…

The bar gets too crowded for her fairly quickly, and she’s not even drinking so she feels like a teenager at a party she shouldn’t have been invited to. One or two men spare her a few minutes to attempt chatting her up, but she’s very good at ‘politely disinterested’ and she chose a sports bar because most of the people there are looking for a game to watch and someone to watch it with, not a hookup. 

Still, it’s too many people, and there’s nobody to really talk to (not that she ought to be surprised), so it’s barely midnight when she leaves. Considering she got there at ten, she’s early, and the idea of unlocking her door before 12:30 makes her feel like a bad young adult so she takes the long way back.

It’s a pretty walk in the daytime, through a more business-oriented part of town, but in the dark it’s just deserted and creepy and she wishes she’d taken the residential roads back to her place. She has her mace ready to go in the side pocket of her purse, should she need it, but what she hears- when she hears something- doesn’t frighten her at first.

That’s her initial mistake.

It’s a sort of gurgling, low and sudden. It stops just when she thinks she might be able to place it, and when it starts again she follows the noise, thinking it might be some kind of animal, or an overflowing manhole she could report and save someone a flooded work route.

When she sees him, the man writhing on the ground, her first instinct is to grab the mace out of her purse. It’s clear pretty quickly though that he’s not going to harm her, but he doesn’t seem drunk, either, so she wonders if he’s seizing and needs an ambulance. When he retches, she could swear that what comes out of his mouth- even in the streetlights- is the consistency of blood.

She looks up from him long enough to notice the man standing behind him, and then her instincts take over and she ducks behind the corner of the building, so that she can see them but remains unnoticed. This isn’t an ordinary homeless man versus man fight. Something here is horribly wrong; she can feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand up straight and her stomach flips and her palms start to itch.

Her palms.

It’s like she can feel the blood rushing through all of her veins, but especially in her hands. It’s like- and she feels as if she must be getting this from _somewhere_ , because she couldn’t be making it up all on her own- the itch in her palms has to do with the man writhing on the ground. The one standing raises his own hands, palm outward, and Alex’s jerk violently as the itch turns to a pinch.

The hurt man gurgles again, and Alex sways a little, steadying herself against the wall and wishing she could run. She knows she won’t, though, because her feet feel too heavy to move at all, much less quickly. She knows what’s happening. What she doesn’t know is _how_ she knows.

She knows, somehow, that the man on the ground isn’t suffering from a knife to the guts. She knows that the standing man is making the one that’s dying choke on his own blood, like drowning but worse, slower and coppery and wrong. She knows because each time the man on the ground makes any kind of sound, her palms pulse. She knows because when the attacker makes a fist and the man on the ground cries out, she _feels_ his heart explode in his chest as if she’s squeezed it to bursting in her own hands.

She covers her mouth and turns away, into the wall.

The killer walks right by her as if he hasn’t noticed her at all, hands in his pockets, hood up, and she has to look back around the corner once he’s gone to be sure the victim’s still there and it wasn’t all just some weird waking nightmare. She’s shaking violently, and she’s struggling not to be sick when she manages to type 911 and ‘call’ into her phone, almost dropping it in the process.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“I’d- I’d like to report a murder.”

…

She tells them that she helped, because she thinks that she did. That’s all she tells them. They ask her who the killer was, but she says she doesn’t know, because she doesn’t. She describes him, even tries to draw him, but there’s not much they can get out of her other than what she says she is- an accessory to murder.

The man she says she helped kill, as far as the police and the medical examiner can tell, wasn’t attacked. There’s no sign of struggle, no open wounds or bruises- just his heart burst, as if he had suffered the most violent, spontaneous heart attack any physician had ever seen.

She insists, so they keep her overnight, in a padded cell that she thinks is supposed to be for people much more violent than she could ever be. But if she’s being truthful with herself she doesn’t know anything anymore- she might be violent. She could be anybody.

They ask if she’d like to call her parents, but she’s over the legal age so when she tells them no they can’t call for her. They will if it’s decided that she’ll go to court, but at the moment all they can do is keep her locked up. They handcuff her once she’s changed into her prison jumpsuit, and she sits in the middle of the cell on the floor, ignoring any amenities, for what feels like days before her aching body forces her into another position.

After a while she tries to sleep, curled up as tightly as she can on the rock-hard cot in the far corner. This, as it turns out, is perhaps her biggest mistake of the night.

In the dream she’s not around the corner, she’s right there. In the dream she reaches into the chest of the man she never touched, and she pulls his heart right out and holds it in her hands, and when she wakes she’s screaming.

She feels like there’s a tiny part of her trapped inside the mess of her that’s watching all of this transpire from a safe distance, like she’s watching some kind of very personal, 4D movie, but she knows she’s just in shock and that part hasn’t caught up. This is entirely out of the realm of things she ever dreamed could happen to her, or to anyone. She has nothing to ground her or to remind her who she is because everything around her is featureless, white or gray or chrome or orange, and there’s no mirror to look in to remind herself of what she looks like.

She wonders whether- if she stays long enough- she might forget herself entirely.

…

In reality, Alex has only been in the cell for three hours, although there would be no way for her to know, just as there would be no way for her to know that the cop who comes to unlock the door to her cell is as in-control of his actions as if he were a puppet on a string.

He opens the door, and Alex follows him down the hall with no prompting. It doesn’t occur to her to wonder why he doesn’t touch her, or lead her by the cuffed hands, or at least have someone else with him. She’s also too shaken up to realize that he’s leading her further from the entrance until the hallway narrows and the cells empty out and she can hear her own heartbeat for the lack of snoring and muttering from inmates.

“Where are we going?”

He doesn’t answer, but he turns left at the next hallway and starts to speed up, so much so that Alex is half-jogging to keep up with him.

“Can I ask that? Sir?”

He turns another left, and then he stops at the end of a hallway, right in front of a door, and doesn’t move. A thousand possibilities of _what_ is behind that door go through Alex’s mind at once but all she can really come up with is another cell, maybe an emptier one. They won’t kill her without telling her first because that’s a violation of her rights, and she’d have to have a trial first anyway. Something isn’t right.

It hits her a split second before the cop jerks forward and opens the door.

It’s still night outside, and that’s what surprises her first, before she realizes he’s opened the door to the sidewalk. There’s a cop car there, parked by the curb, and she knows without a doubt that’s where she’s supposed to go even before he opens the back door for her. 

“Am I being transferred?”

No answer.

In the backseat of the squad car she begins to shake.

Somehow the fact that he's not talking to her makes it worse. She tries to pay attention to the streets and figure out where they're going, but she's tired and nauseous and can't focus. All she knows is that they're headed toward the water. She wonders, in a moment of panic, whether the cop is going to drown her. 

They're in an industrial area when they pull over. Alex shakes especially hard not when he opens the door, but when she gets out he gets back in and locks the door. Stricken, shuddering and too terrified to cry, she watches the squad car leave her behind. She sinks to the curb, dropping her face into her cuffed hands, and squeezes her eyes shut. 

Someone touches her shoulder and she jumps so hard that her hands fight the metal and the cuffs snap like they're made of paper. 

"Relax," says the woman standing beside her. 

"You're safe now."

...

"I'm gonna give you the short version first, so you can sleep."

Alex shakes her head, taking the mug of tea from her lips so she can answer. 

"I don't want to sleep. I need- tell me everything. How did you find me?"

Abby presses her lips together, trying to plan out what she's going to say, probably. Alex trusts her already. Maybe because when she had broken down into sobs as soon as Abby had found her, she'd ended up in an old hotel building surrounded by blankets. 

There's something else, though. Something kind about Abby's crooked smile, something inherently likeable about the way her hair is mussed up and the way she talks, leaning her elbows onto her knees. 

"I'm not alone, first of all. There are a bunch of other women who live here, and each of us has a power, like you do. The first thing you gotta try to come to terms with is the fact that you have a superpower. That's gonna become normal to you pretty fast. Mine is superstrength."

"You haven't met her because she's a little busy, but the woman who helped me find you is Becky. She can possess people, from a reasonable distance, kind of like playing a video game."

Alex is still trying to understand what her power is. Abby's makes sense because she's kind of tall and physically imposing, but Alex thinks- after busting her own cuffs off by accident- that she might be able to do the same thing. 

"So she possessed the cop?"

"Yeah. We heard about you through the cop chatter, and...it's kind of easy to pick people like us out. Your circumstances didn't make any sense."

Alex brings the tea up again and lets it scald her mouth a little, ignoring the heat because she needs the chamomile. 

"I don't know what my power is," she admits, and Abby smiles at her a little.

"I think I might. What happened with the, ah, accessory to murder thing?"

"I helped kill someone."

Her answer is a little bit cold, but she can't help herself and she's surprised when Abby doesn't blink. 

"Yeah, but tell me exactly how it happened."

Alex hesitates, considering her options. She doesn't really have any- she can tell Abby the truth, and try to understand this bizarre alternate universe she's been tossed into, or she can refuse and try to sleep. She knows that if she chooses sleep she'll only wake up screaming again, and she wants that even less than she wants to tell the story. 

She explains it in as much detail as possible. Halfway through she chokes up a little, and Abby joins her on the couch, sitting close enough to offer comfort just by her leg pressed against Alex's. By the time the story _is_ over, Alex is crying, and Abby has an arm around her shoulders as if she feels partially responsible. 

"You didn't kill him," she says, and Alex embarrasses herself with a sob that she muffles with her hands. "I promise you that you didn't have anything to do with it, and I'm about to tell you why, okay?"

"I did kill him. I helped. I could- I could feel it happening. I shouldn't even be here. I could do it again and not even know, and I don't want to hurt anybody."

"Hey, listen to me."

Abby takes her by the shoulders and Alex trembles, cold even beneath two blankets.

"You're not gonna hurt anyone. You're not a killer. You're just a kid with a power you don't know how to control yet."

Alex wants so badly for that to be true that she aches, from her chest to her throat. It's so much exactly what she needs to hear that she doubts it on instinct, hastily wiping her tears away. 

"How do you know?"

Abby takes her hands back, looking down at the for a moment that distracts Alex into wondering what she sees there. When she speaks again Alex has stopped shaking and the ache is gone, like a snake bite with the poison sucked out. 

"Because we've all been there."

...

Eventually she does sleep. By the time she does, she's exhausted enough that she doesn't dream at all, and when she wakes on the same couch she fell asleep on it takes her a few seconds to remember where she is. 

In Abby's armchair from the night before, a girl her age is reading, cross-legged and barefoot with a well-loved Bible in her lap. When she's noticed she gets a smile that's warm and genuine and makes Alex feel undeserving. 

"Good morning."

Alex blinks, taking her in. She has the complexion of someone from the kind of coastline that Allie wants for, and cheekbones so sharp she really shouldn't be as pretty as she is. She squints a little when she smiles, like whatever she's smiling at makes her so happy she can't see straight. Alex answers cautiously, sitting upright. 

"Good morning. Um, what time is it?"

"Like nine, I think. It's training day, so everyone else is out. Otherwise the loud stuff would have woken you up a long time ago."

The other girl mirrors Abby's actions from last night, joining Alex on the couch, but with circumstances so different Alex only notices that in passing. 

"I'm Tobin. I get to be your roommate."

The way she says it is so funny- as if rooming with a possible psychopath is a privilege- that Alex can't help but laugh, surprising herself more than her counterpart. 

"I'm Alex."

"I know, Abby told me all about you. I think it's so cool that you're an empath. Do you wanna see the room?"

Alex nods, and halfway up the stairs, trailing behind Tobin, she catches the part of the sentence she didn't understand. 

"I'm a what?"

"An empath. Like, you get to use other people's powers."

"That's what I do?"

Tobin stops at a corner room, nudging the door open with her foot so she can hold her Bible with one hand and gesture with the other. 

"Yeah, that's what Abby said. Voila."

Her French accent is awful and Alex smiles at it, shaking her head. There's a mirror over the dresser, and when she catches sight of herself she actually gasps out loud like a frightened heroine. She hardly recognizes herself, with her smeared makeup and prison jumpsuit. She looks like an escaped convict. 

She _is_ an escaped convict. 

"I'm supposed to take you out to get some clothes," says Tobin, over her shoulder, "but you can shower first, if you want. Some of my stuff will probably fit you."

"I don't usually look like a zombie," Alex jokes weakly.

"Hey, it's okay. Orange doesn't work for everyone."

...

Tobin's shorts fit Alex just fine, but her shirt is a little short, just enough that Alex is constantly feeling like she should pull it down. It's good enough, though, and it's nice to be in normal clothes again, scrubbed clean of the night before.

"Training day is where everyone goes out and works on controlling and understanding their powers." 

She sounds a bit like she’s quoting someone, but Alex listens because she needs to know, whether it’s a direct quote from Spiderman 3 or not.

“What’s yours?”

“I’m a neutralizer. That’s why I’m not at training, cause my power is the power to...kinda negate everyone else’s. Around me, you don’t _have_ a superpower.”

Something occurs to Alex, then, and she pulls at the bottom hem of the shirt that’s too short, her stomach sinking.

“So they roomed me with you because they were afraid I’d hurt someone?”

“Whoa, no.”

Tobin stops walking abruptly, reaching out to grab Alex’s wrist so that they’re standing face to face on the empty sidewalk. When they make eye contact Alex feels as if Tobin can see right through her, like Tobin know the _whole_ story even though Alex hasn’t spoken a word of it. She feels vulnerable. But she feels like it’s okay to be.

“I volunteered to be your roommate. Abby said you were scared you were gonna hurt someone, so I figured, I might not be able to throw a pickup truck two hundred feet, but _that_ I can do.”

Alex thinks she might have made a friend.

Tobin has no ID or anything, just a credit card, but Alex doesn’t ask her how or why.

…

“How’d the spree go?”

Abby doesn’t seem to be able to talk to anyone without touching them; she slings an arm amicably about Tobin’s shoulder when she asks. Alex has two shopping bags full of a new life, and it feels good to start over, even with last night still lurking in the corner of her mind. She wants to ask how they got away with taking her, whether someone’s searching for her, but she doesn’t _really_ want the answer so she doesn’t bother opening her mouth. Tobin gestures at the bags, handing the credit card back to Abby with a flourish.

“We got her shirts that fit, too.”

Blushing, Alex pulls down at the hem of the one she’s wearing, and Abby and Tobin laugh together.

“Why don’t you take her bags up so I can borrow her for a minute?”

Abby leads her out into a yard that’s much bigger than it ought to be. There are a few women there, waiting for them, standing almost in a circle but moreso in a clump, and Alex feels like an intruder without Tobin around. She can sense, somehow, the powers of the people around her. Abby’s is familiar now, but the other three are jarring and frightening and Alex can think of a hundred ways she could hurt someone just standing there without meaning to.

She clenches her hands into fists, digging her nails into her palms.

“You’ll meet everyone at some point today, but I wanted to introduce you to the big cheese and a couple of other important people,” Abby explains, leaning close to say it. Alex nods, even though she’s nervous, and tries to figure out which power goes where so that she’ll stop feeling like she’s a time bomb.

Christie is ‘the big cheese’, but she’s really not very big. She has an air of authority about her, though, that makes her easy to pick out. If she touches something and decides she wants it gone, it’s gone- Alex unclenches her fists and makes a mental note not to touch anything, especially Abby.

Shannon, who Abby introduces next, has a kind smile and almost looks like she’s going to extend a hand that Alex will panic when she can’t take. She manipulates ice. Alex is too confused by how that would even work to worry about doing it herself.

The last person Abby introduces is Becky, and Alex breaks in, her nervousness keeping her from being as polite as she’d like to be.

“I remember you. I- I mean, I remember Abby saying that you made the cop let me go.”

Becky grins, then shrugs.

“It was the least I could do.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

Abby’s looking at her like she’s just discovered the cure for cancer, and Christie looks impressed, and Alex isn’t sure what it is she’s done exactly but she’s glad she did it. Becky raises an eyebrow, and her answer comes deadpan: “Get a longer shirt.”

…

For her, training is fifteen times as hard as it is for everyone else.

Not only does she have to understand her power, she has to know the ins and outs of everyone else’s- every day is a training day for her, except once a week when Abby takes a shift and can’t train her. By the time she gets to bed every night she’s so exhausted that nightmares don’t have the chance to catch up with her.

Usually.

The first time she wakes up from the same nightmare she had in the cell, she doesn’t scream, but she must not have been breathing because she’s gasping for air like a fish out of water, fisting her hands into blankets.

“Alex?”

Tobin waking up just furthers her shame, and she closes her eyes, forcing herself to take slower breaths.

“I’m fine. Sorry I woke you up.”

The first time, Tobin doesn’t question her.

The second time, three days later, Tobin asks, “Are you sure?” and then adds, “I don’t mind,” and Alex nods in the darkness until she realizes Tobin can’t see her and she croaks out an affirmative answer that is enough to put her roommate at ease.

The third time, Tobin sits up and turns on the lamp that rests on the night table between their beds, and Alex blinks in the sudden brightness.

“What’s up with you? Do you have, like, sleep apnea? Lauren might be able to fix that.”

“Nightmares,” Alex says, but her mouth is dry. “Hold on a minute.”

She pads into the bathroom to break one of her parents’ old rules and drink from the faucet, and when she’s back Tobin is sitting on her bed, like she’s expecting a fairytale bedtime story. It’s one in the morning, only two hours after they’d turned that lamp off.

“I used to have nightmares, too, when I was new. Talking about them helped.”

Alex stands at the foot of her own bed, considering it. Tobin’s hair is out of a ponytail and loose around her shoulders, which is rare enough to distract Alex for half a second before she figures she has to make a decision. It might actually help to talk about it. It had helped with Abby. The problem is, there’s something innocent and untainted about her relationship with Tobin- something carefree- and Alex doesn’t want to ruin that.

Tobin takes her silence as a ‘no thanks’.

“You don’t have to, though. I just wanna make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m okay. Thank you. I’m- I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it yet.”

…

She’s never ready to talk about it with Tobin. 

…

She gets better.

The nightmares don’t, really, but Tobin doesn’t ask her again, and training gets easier. One by one she starts to understand people’s powers, mostly by spending time with them, and training with Abby boosts her confidence. Even though Tobin calms her, Abby’s the one to make her feel like she can handle what’s being thrown at her. She’s not sure what it is that’s convinced Abby that she’s worth betting on, but whatever it is, she’s glad for it. She’s glad for Abby.

She joins the shift system a month after they rescued her. She goes a whole week before she sees someone die, and she’s surprised when that doesn’t find its way into the nightmares she still has so regularly. 

The nightmares stay the same until three months in when she starts seeing Abby as the victim she helps kill.

The first night that happens she _does_ wake up crying, and Tobin turns on the light, and leaves the room, and for a while Alex thinks she’s been deserted until Tobin comes back with a mug of hot tea and a gentle, sleepy smile.

.,.

Four months in she meets Kelley. Two weeks after that Kelley’s almost a permanent fixture in her and Tobin’s room, with the kind of laugh that makes everything a little bit easier to handle.

It’s six months- six months of routine, of nightmares as regular as the moon phases, of learning to adjust- before Hope shows up and Alex has to start all over.


	2. abby

It's wet out, and Abby can barely hear the muffled struggle under the steady beat of the traffic. She thinks about ignoring it, pretending she never heard it, but in the seconds between the bar door closing and her turning away from the alley, there's a cry for help that's rapidly silenced.

Sighing, she flips up her hoodie.

Who the hell messed up and made _her_ a hero?

Strength is no use against a gun, and she crouches low behind a dumpster to take it in. He's her size, and thick, though Abby can tell it's muscle rather than fat, and there's a butterfly knife in one of his heavy fists; the other is full of the sleeve of the jacket of the woman he's robbing. She's petite, and sobbing as she fumbles through her purse.

It takes only a second to close the distance, and when she splashes through the puddles he jerks his head up in surprise and is already turning, wildly waving the knife, when Abby's knee connects hard with his gut - it knocks him back, clear across the alley, and he groans. It's almost unfair, Abby thinks, as she hauls him up by the collar and slams him back into the brick wall hard enough that they're doused in a shower of water off the building's shaking fire escape.

Somehow he's held onto the knife, and he tries again, but Abby catches his fist and slams his arm back into the wall with as much force as she can muster; the crack echoes down the alley, and she knows she's snapped bones. Taking her time, she musters her most authoritative voice - it shakes, but she's not sure he notices.

"If I see you around here again, I'll do more than just break your wrist."

He nods, wincing, and when Abby releases him he doesn't even wait for her to take a step back before he's sprinting away, clutching his wrist to his chest. Abby watches him go and is about to follow when a hand catches her sleeve; she jerks away a little too hard, and the girl - now that she's closer, Abby can tell she's only a few years younger than her. Nineteen, maybe twenty - goes stumbling.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she gasps, flinching, and Abby rolls her eyes and pulls back her hood, putting her hands out, palms raised.

"Relax."

"Shit, I'm sorry- I mean, thank you . . ." Trailing off, she looks Abby up and down, and it takes everything in Abby to do the same, her shoulders tensing defensively out of habit - and it's not for nothing. "How did you do that?"

"It doesn't matter. You-" Christ, she sounds like Smokey the Bear- "should be more careful."

"But that wasn't human."

Abby almost groans aloud every _single_ time she tries to help - and she's got her hood on and her back turned before the girl grabs for her again.

"No, I'm sorry. That was- that was rude. I didn't mean that."

"Well what the hell _do_ you mean?"

She grits it out, irritated and with her unwanted sense of self-preservation kicking in, and the girl flinches but stands steady. Then she's digging in her purse again, grabbing for her wallet, and her hands are still shaking when she holds out a wad of bills.

"I don't want your money."

The girl falters, and lets her hand drop, but again she doesn't let Abby get more than a step away before she's calling after her.

"Can I buy you dinner, or something? A drink?"

Abby's stomach clenches, and it's like this girl can see right through her - does her outfit scream homeless or something? Either way, the girl doesn't seem like a police bait threat, and part of Abby insists that even if she is, it's welcome. Pushing her hands in her pockets, she turns again.

"Dinner."

They make it to the end of the block, and a stop light, before the girl girl turns to her again - this time she has a hand reached out, and she's not shaking as much and waits as Abby blinks and hesitates, then puts her hand out for the girl to take.

"I'm Sarah."

Abby puts every bit of effort she has into giving her a normal handshake.

"Abby."

-

They go to a diner - Cosmic - in the theatre district, and Sarah tells her to order whatever she wants. She orders less than she needs, and when she's cutting into her steak she pushes a little too hard and the plate cracks under the pressure.

Sarah doesn't even blink.

When she has a new plate and Sarah has cut her meal for her - she feels like a child, and can't remember the last time she felt this embarrassed - she downs it so fast she almost makes herself sick. She sits on her hands to keep from fidgeting, and Sarah's curiosity is brimming over into an almost painful expression.

"How long have you been . . . alone?"

"Three years."

Sarah blinks at that, and Abby hates that for a fleeting moment she thinks the girl is pretty.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-three." Before Sarah is able to continue pressing, Abby turns it around. "You?"

"Nineteen. I'm a student at Columbia."

If nothing else Sarah is a talker, and a fast one - it takes only a minute for Abby to get out of her that she's majoring in education, from Dallas, and on a soccer scholarship. She had a boyfriend, but now has a single apartment on the Lower East Side.

"Are you one of them?"

Her voice is lowered, almost a whisper, and Abby blinks.

"One of who?"

"One of those . . . freelance superhero people. I thought, with how you hit that guy, that maybe-"

Abby cuts her off. "I'm not."

"But you are a mutant, right?"

It's nothing but unbridled curiosity, but Abby bristles and puts her fork down and she's almost standing before Sarah catches her by the sleeve - she tenses to jerk away, but Abby doesn't want to hurt her and sits down with a huff instead.

"I don't want to talk about it. I'm human, I am. I can just . . . do stuff. I didn't ask to."

She’s being standoffish - it’s a defense mechanism - but Sarah doesn’t flinch.

“Can I see?”

-

It's hard finding somewhere secluded in Manhattan, and Abby ends up prying apart a chain and lock on a fence down at the docks and ducking inside an abandoned warehouse, all metal scrap and wooden pallets covered with tarps that haven't been moved in years. Sarah looks hesitant but follows, and Abby almost wants to give her another lecture about being more careful.

The words catch in her throat when Sarah looks at her.

"What do you want me to do?"

Sarah blinks, surprised, then looks around. There's an empty beer can on the closest pallet, and Sarah picks it up and offers it to her.

"You saw me break bones two hours ago, and you want me to crush a beer can?"

She does it anyway, sandwiching the can between her palms and slapping them together in one quick motion, then opening them again and offering the now pancaked - as if by a machine - can back to Sarah. Sarah just stares back.

"That's- that's easy for you?"

Abby shrugs and reaches for her hand, catching it lightly in her grip and turning it to leave the can in her palm. "That's harder."

"What, touching me?"

"No." Abby drops her hand, and the tint to Sarah's cheeks is evident even with the lack of proper light, and Abby feels the need to put her hands away and tucks them into her pockets. "I mean, do anything that light. It's hard for me to not just break things."

"So it's easier for you to punch through a wall than touch it?"

"I guess."

"That really . . ." She trails off when Abby stoops down and picks up a loose ball bearing, weighing it in her hand before holding it up to Sarah, then flattening it between her fingers. Sarah watches as she rolls it back up again, like she would do putty, and turns on her heels before pulling her arm back and then letting it go, launching the metal from a throw so powerful it punches the bearing through the sheet metal roof. "That really sucks?"

Abby is quiet for a moment, and she can feel it slipping.

"I don't want to hurt people."

Sarah, though, doesn't hesitate. "But you don't."

"You don't know that. I break everything! I open doors too fast and pull them off their hinges, and I can't use pencils because I break the lead. I used to play soccer, like you, but now I try to kick a ball and it pops. I dislocated someone's shoulder giving them a high five. I mean, fuck, you should be scared of me."

"Well I'm not."

[ . . . ]

A week after she meets Sarah- Sarah, whose number she was given on a slip of paper, whose number she has memorized even though she doesn’t remember her _parents’_ phone number- Abby witnesses a car accident.

It’s by chance. She works odd jobs during the day to pay for motel rooms and food and this month her job is at a Red Lobster in the heart of Times Square. She works the dinner rush, because that’s the shift that nobody wants, and she spends five hours at a time covered in grease surrounded by air-brushed chrome and fake food so that she has a bed to sleep in.

The restaurant closes at eleven but she doesn’t usually get to leave until past midnight. After being on her feet all day (her other minimum-wage job is at a kennel where her job is to walk all the dogs) she makes her way home slowly. She doesn’t take public transportation because the last time she was on a subway and it lurched forward, her hand left a dent in the pole she was holding onto to keep her balance.

She’s halfway home (or ‘home’) when it happens- a car crosses the yellow line and hits a limo headfirst- and she’s not the only one on the street, but she’s the only one to do anything.

When she gets close enough she can see that the limo, flipped onto its hood, is filled with kids. That’s where she goes first, flipping up her hood and ripping the door off it’s hinges like it’s cardboard and not steel. It cuts up her hands but she doesn’t notice; the kids are crying or shouting or screaming by the time she gets in to try and get them out. There are twelve of them, all in evening wear.

Eleven make it out alive.

The girl she fishes out from the front of the limo, just by the driver’s compartment, would have been dead on impact. Abby knows. She can tell. That doesn’t keep her from feeling like it’s her fault when she stumbles out of the wreck of the limo with the girl limp in her arms. She died of a broken neck. The only other mark on her is a scrape by her forehead.

That girl’s not the only casualty. The driver of the limo is dead, too, but he’s a middle aged man and Abby doesn’t feel for him what she feels for the dead teenager, no matter how hard she tries to make them equal in her head. She overhears the police say that the driver of the other car was drunk, and she gets so mad that she forces herself to disappear long before she wants to, before the ambulance even comes to get the rest of the kids that didn’t fit in the first.

She knows she won’t be able to sleep, so the only available option is to get drunk.

She has too high a tolerance for that to be a quick thing; she has to stay at the bar so long that the bartender must be wondering how she hasn’t blacked out yet. By the time she stumbles out it’s almost four and she’s not even /that/ drunk, just drunk enough to think it’s okay to call up Sarah.

It’s the first time she’s seen Sarah’s apartment. She only sees it from the outside, because Sarah’s waiting for her in front of it, in striped pajama pants and a college sweatshirt and socked feet, blinking blearily in the streetlight.

“Are you okay?”

“A girl died tonight.”

“In- did you-”

“I think she was dead first. I mean, she was dead when I got to her.”

“Do you need somewhere to stay?”

That must be what Sarah thinks the reason behind her phone call was, Abby realizes, and it makes her feel like an asshole so she distracts herself by looking at Sarah more closely. Everything about her is miniature. As drunk as Abby is she’s noticing stupid things, like how long Sarah’s eyelashes are, and how even a sweatshirt that seems like it’s her size is a little too long in the arms because she’s pulling the sleeves down over her hands.

And expecting an answer.

“I- I need...”

She doesn’t know what she needs. She doesn’t remember why she called. Right now all she remembers is that Sarah’s not afraid of her. She leans down- she has to lean down a lot- and surprises herself when she presses her lips to Sarah’s. 

Sarah kisses back. Abby doesn’t know what to do with that, with the hand that Sarah brings up to the back of her neck or the shock that goes down her spine when Sarah sidles closer to her.

She pulls back and hates herself for doing it almost as much as she hates herself for the kiss, because Sarah just blinks up at her and her lips are still parted a little like she’s expecting a replay. Abby had been tangentially aware of her attraction up until now, but the alcohol has made it so much worse, and it’s horrible that she can’t control it. That she can’t control herself.

“Fuck. God, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” Sarah says, reaching for the front of Abby’s jacket and pulling her down again. This time Abby’s afraid to kiss back; afraid she won’t be able to stop herself when it counts. She can’t understand why Sarah would want to kiss her at all, except that there’s something kind of movie-esque romantic about it. She’s just saved a couple lives. It’s early in the morning or late at night.

“I’m not a hero,” she says against Sarah’s lips, and Sarah’s fingers brush against the short hairs at the back of her neck. 

“Okay.”

“I’m not trying to make you my romantic interest.”

Sarah laughs a little, pecking Abby on the lips again like she’s trying to draw her into another kiss.

“Okay, Abby.”

“I’m gonna go home now.”

Their foreheads press together, and for a moment- mostly because she’s drunk and drunk on an empty stomach- Abby lets herself wonder if Sarah really _wants_ to kiss her, for a reason other than her stupid power.

“Stay. I have a couch.”

[ . . . ]

It’s weird to have someone.

Abby’s not sure what to call Sarah. They go another week and a half before Sarah kisses her again, and this time they’re both sober and Abby’s more confident that Sarah likes _her_ and not her situation, so she kisses back.

She doesn’t stay overnight often, and she’s still working two jobs and sleeping an average of six hours and saving lives in her free time, but Sarah makes everything different. With Sarah around it’s like Abby wants to aim for something better. That’s weird for her. She hasn’t felt motivated to do anything since college, and even then it didn’t feel like something achievable. She was good at numbers, and okay at explaining them, but she could never imagine herself behind a desk.

Abby’s not sure what she imagines herself doing, but she knows who she wants to be, because it’s whatever Sarah sees when she looks.

She starts saving up money in the beginning of June, right when she turns 24, and for the first time she feels like an adult. She stops renting motel rooms and lives with Sarah for two months while she struggles to save up enough money for a one-month deposit on a shitty apartment of her own.

It’s harder to forget that Sarah’s nineteen when they’re sharing a loft space.

She has classes four days of the week, sometimes two in one day, and in the mornings when she leaves and Abby has two hours before her shelter job starts she feels like a dog herself, cooped up waiting for their person to come back. Sarah’s so young, but she doesn’t seem young most of the time. She lives off campus and cooks her own dinner and does her own laundry, but she’s still a _teenager_ , still just a kid whose parents pay her rent.

[ . . . ]

Sarah settles atop Abby’s thighs, shy the way Abby is only playing at, and Abby knows if she wasn’t terrified she’d have to sit on her hands to hold back — as it is, she pushes herself back into the seat cushions, and tries not to look anywhere too hard or too long. It’s hard, especially when Sarah’s hands start toying with the hem of her shirt, and she swallows hard.

“Abby?”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

It’s been said a dozen times, but it still feels lame when it falls from Abby’s lips, like she knows Sarah can tell it’s halfhearted under all the well meaning. Sarah doesn’t even bother responding this time (or the last two times, or four — Abby can’t remember how many times she’s walked away), ducking down to press their lips together as she slides the tips of her fingers across the skin of Abby’s stomach until she’s out of air and has to pull back.

“Just try, okay?” She’s mumbling, breathing hard at first, then clearer, “I trust you.”

Abby turns her head at the last moment this time, and focuses hard on the traffic outside Sarah’s apartment window; Sarah lets her sit with it, but Abby knows she’s waiting for her to walk away again, and that more than anything makes her want to stay. She lets out a hard puff of air.

“I don’t trust me.”

“I know you don’t. Can you try? For me?”

When Abby doesn’t answer right away, Sarah slides one of her hands up along her ribs, settling with her fingertips just brushing the bottom of Abby’s bra, and Abby reaches, startled, for Sarah’s wrist. It’s small enough that she can close her hand- index finger to thumb- all the way around it, and she can feel Sarah’s pulse against her palm and knows that if she’s not especially careful the bones will snap under her hand.

She faces a momentary decision. She’ll be moving out in a week if everything goes well. Sarah isn’t even close to twenty yet, but she might as well be, the way she acts most of the time. There’s a big possibility that Sarah’s just as inexperienced with this as Abby is- a big possibility that if they do this, it’ll be a big first. 

So she stays. And she tries to trust herself, and she takes it slow, and she lets Sarah do all the undressing so that there’s no chance she’ll rip anything. They sort of stand there in front of the bed, totally unclothed, and when Sarah holds out her hand, Abby takes it. 

Sarah lays back on the bed, pulling Abby with her, and it takes them a while but they get used to it and start to understand each other’s bodies. Sarah doesn’t have to say that she’s never done this before; Abby can tell and she knows that her own inexperience is just as obvious. It doesn’t matter. Abby focuses on applying just enough force, and she almost always undershoots, but Sarah compensates and it seems like it works. They’re quiet, both of them, but Sarah’s breath catches in her throat when she comes and Abby swears she hears the beginnings of a moan.

Abby’s too tense to finish, but she doesn’t care. She’s not sure if she should get up and get dressed and maybe leave- not that she knows where she’d go- but Sarah saves her from having to think about it, draping an arm around Abby’s midsection. Abby doesn’t even realize she’s trembling with belated anxiety until she ducks her chin against Sarah’s collarbone and sucks in a deep breath.

“I told you that you wouldn’t hurt me.”

[ . . . ]

Abby moves out just in time for Sarah’s official sophomore year to start. She’s trying to graduate early, she says, which is why she’s been taking classes over the summer, but when her real semester starts she all but disappears. Abby doesn’t have a computer or a phone, just an apartment and Sarah’s phone number and enough money to get herself food, most of the time. She calls Sarah on Fridays, to see what her schedule is; sometimes they manage to get together on a weeknight and Abby cooks, and every once in a while they go to bed. Abby gets better. The more she uses her powers to help people- breaking up fights, or muggings- the easier it is to touch Sarah the way she wants.

But she knows they’re not together. Not really. Their age difference starts to factor a little more, not in maturity but just because their lives are so busy and different. The two simultaneous jobs start to wear her down, and she starts to feel like she’s hitting a dead end, and her restlessness comes back twofold.

She’s starting to regret deciding she wasn’t a hero.

[ . . . ]

“I think I’m gonna quit my jobs.”

Sarah lifts her head from where she’s bent over, studying the post-modern novel, or whatever class she’s got now. 

“How’ll you pay for your rent?”

Abby has tried not to think about it.

“I guess I won’t.”

“You can’t be homeless.”

“I can’t keep doing this, either.”

Sarah stretches out her legs, but even all the way stretched out they don’t reach Abby’s lap, so Abby scoots a little closer and picks up Sarah’s feet. Her skin is cold; Abby’s fingers work against the pads of Sarah’s toes without having to think about it now. She never expected that intimacy would come this easily to her- she never expected to be intimate at all.

“Don’t be offended by this, okay?”

Abby raises an eyebrow, and Sarah blushes, toes curling.

“Did you go to college?”

Abby outright laughs, not at the question but at Sarah’s hesitance, and drops her head to kiss Sarah’s big toe.

“Yes. NYU. Stern School of Business.”

“ _Business?_ ”

“Accounting.”

“You were an _accounting_ major? Well, couldn’t you try to get that kind of job?”

Abby shrugs, scratching the back of her head. It feels like it was forever ago now, and that makes her feel old, and she doesn’t like that, especially not with Sarah’s feet in her lap. 

“I thought about it. I don’t think I could handle sitting behind a desk that long.”

Sarah sits up, but Abby doesn’t miss her for long, because she closes the book and climbs into Abby’s lap to kiss her. 

“Can I tell you something?”

“Anything.”

Abby feels stupid and overly romantic when she says it, but that gets canceled out pretty quickly when Sarah speaks again, running a hand through her short hair and resting it at the back of her neck.

“I love you. And I think you should do whatever will make you happy.”

Abby grins, then catches herself and tries to be serious again, resting her hands on Sarah’s hips. 

“You love me?”

“Did you even hear the other part?”

“I wanna help people.”

“So then help people. You can stay with me.”

“You don’t think that’ll freak out your college friends?”

Sarah laughs, but she doesn’t answer, and Abby’s left to wonder about the answer until she’s distracted by Sarah’s lips on her cheek and her temple and her eyelids. Carefully, she slides an arm around Sarah’s lower back and pulls her so that their upper bodies press together, and five minutes into what she assumes is going to be at least a twenty-minute ordeal of foreplay she murmurs her reciprocation against Sarah’s neck.

“I love you, too.”

“Good. Do you know how to find a least squares regression line?”

[ . . . ]

The police scanner is Sarah’s idea. 

Abby didn’t even realize it was possible to listen in on police conversations, and it seems a little illegal to her but Sarah promises her that it’s not and she runs with it. For a few days she just listens, and buys as much black clothing as she can think to buy with the money she has left, and on the fourth day she waits until she hears something that sounds promising and takes off.

It’s the middle of the night when she does, and Sarah’s asleep. Abby feels bad for leaving without saying anything so she scribbles down a note, expecting that she’ll be back before Sarah has any reason to read it.

It’s another car accident, and Abby’s tense when she gets there because she’s remembering the dead kid she pulled from her last one. The police are there but they’re not doing much; there only seems to be one car involved and for a moment Abby’s confused as to how this constitutes as an accident. The car is up on the curb, the hood pushed up against the wall of the building it hit, but the driver is standing next to it and looks alright to her. Besides the cops she can pick out two other people, probably pedestrian witnesses, or passengers- two women, huddled in sweatjackets. It doesn’t occur to Abby that it’s really not cool enough for that. She’s wearing one too, with a scar around the lower part of her face and the hood up so that she’s maintaining as much secrecy as she can.

She almost turns to leave when she sees what the police are waiting for is a fire rescue truck.

There’s a pair of feet sticking out from under the crashed car. When she comes closer she can hear him groaning, and she sees the cops start to head for her, but she’s not hearing them when they tell her to step back. Instead she cracks her knuckles and crouches.

“Sir? You okay under there?”

Another groan; she can smell blood.

“Kind of a stupid question, huh? What’s your name?”

This groan comes out sounding a little like ‘Eric’, so she goes with it, knowing that the police are closing in on her.

“Alright, Eric. Hang in there, I’m gonna get you out.”

“Ma’am, please step away from the scene, we have professionals on the way.”

Abby’s surprised by how polite the policeman to her right is being- he probably thinks she’s drunk, or scared, or dangerous. Or all three.

“You don’t need a professional.”

She grabs the car by the crumpled hood, then just beneath the front bumper. The cop lunges for her, but before he can reach her she grunts and has the front of the car above her head, silencing the entire block.

It’s pretty heavy.

“M-ma’am?”

“Get him out.”

“We’re not authorized to-”

“ _Get. Him. Out. _”__

__Between the two cops they manage to get the poor guy out from under the car and far enough away that Abby can drop it; it bounces on its wheels a little and she wipes her greasy hands on her dark jeans, turning to leave. The police don’t bother to ask her who she is or where she’s going, which seems like poor judgement on their part, but then they /are/ the NYPD and she _did_ just lift a car, so maybe her perception of ‘skewed judgement’ is a little off._ _

__She thinks she’s alone until a block away she realizes she’s being followed._ _

__She’s afraid to go back to Sarah’s, because whoever’s following her needs to stay as far from her girl as possible, but she also doesn’t know where else to go, so she turns around and stands still on the empty sidewalk._ _

__Her followers must have hidden, but she knows she’s not paranoid. They’re there._ _

__“If you don’t come out and tell me who you are I’ll lead you right to a police station.”_ _

__She’s bluffing. She has no idea where the nearest police station is._ _

__They don’t know that, though, so she’s not really surprised when they come out from behind a corner, but they don’t look guilty at all. They’re both women (the two from the scene of the accident), but in the streetlight now that she’s looking closer she can see that one of them is really young. A kid._ _

__“We saw what you can do,” the taller one says, and Abby crosses her arms._ _

__“It would have been tough not to. What do you want?”_ _

__When they flip their hoods back down she’s struck by just _how_ / young the younger one is. A teenager, for sure, and not even close to as old as Sarah. Sixteen, maybe. Neither of them seem particularly threatening, although the taller of the two, who looks to be around her age, has eyes so ice blue she can tell even in low light._ _

__“To show you ours.”_ _

__[ . . . ]_ _

__They take her to a 24-hour diner first, and Abby’s so hungry and curious that she doesn’t question it, and she’s halfway through her grilled sandwich before they even try to talk to her._ _

__The older, taller one introduces herself as Shannon; says she can freeze things. When Abby asks Lauren, the younger one, what her power is, the way she answers is startling._ _

__“God gave me the power to heal.”_ _

__It floors Abby so hard that she doesn’t even say anything, just takes a sip of her lukewarm Coke and winces at it._ _

__“Flat?”_ _

__“Warm.”_ _

__She’s not sure why Shannon cares, until she pours part of her water into the ketchup cap, touches it, then knocks the ice cube that appears into Abby’s glass. It’s totally uncalled for, and they’re in a diner where anyone could see them, but Shannon does it like she’s not even thinking about it, like she just wants Abby to enjoy her drink._ _

__Abby thinks they’ll get along._ _

__Lauren pokes at Abby’s biceps from across the table, exposed where she’s rolled up her t-shirt, and Abby looks at her, unsure what to make of it._ _

__“Are you like a Captain America type thing? Supersoldier?”_ _

__“Not a soldier,” she answers, maybe a little too quickly and a little too defensively, because she sees Shannon’s arm move and knows she must be warning Lauren under the table, “not particularly super, either.”_ _

__“So you don’t know how you got it?”_ _

__Abby shrugs. She doesn’t like to think about it, about the high school fight where she’d decked a bully so hard he’d flown back into a table and broken it. Broken the table and his jaw. She’d stayed in bed for a week then, terrified to touch anything, unable to eat anything but finger foods because she’d bend any fork or spoon she touched. Her parents thought she was doing it because of some kind of psychotic break. Her siblings thought she was doing it for attention._ _

__“Showed up when I hit puberty.”_ _

__“Ours, too,” Lauren says, and Abby has to wonder how far into puberty she even /is/._ _

__“Think there’s a connection?”_ _

__Shannon shrugs, taking a sip of her unsweetened tea, and Lauren looks at her like she’d like to know the answer just as much as Abby._ _

__“I don’t know. We’re all kind of new to this, too.”_ _

__“All?”_ _

__[ . . . ]_ _

__There are four of them._ _

__Abby follows Shannon and Lauren back to where they call home, and that’s where she’ll meet Christie and Heather. On the way to headquarters, Lauren informs them that they all have nicknames- “not like superhero names, just nicknames”- Shannon is Boxxy, Lauren is Cheney, Christie is Pearcie, and Heather is HAO. She beseeches Abby to call her Cheney, because “Lauren is too proper”, and Abby cracks up a little no matter how seriously she tries to take it._ _

__“What’s yours?”_ _

__“My what?”_ _

__“Your nickname.”_ _

__Abby looks over at Shannon, who raises an eyebrow, no help._ _

__“I don’t have one. Abby kinda _is_ a nickname, I guess.”_ _

__“For what? Abigail?”_ _

__The old version makes Abby wince, because it makes her think of mass, and long Sundays, and she doesn’t like to wonder what Abigail’s God would think of her._ _

__[ . . . ]_ _

__She can tell right away that Christie’s kind of a leader, because Christie is the one to take her aside, in their charming little hotel-turned-home and explain everything she knows. Abby assumes that Shannon is putting Lauren to sleep- like a child- because she shoos Lauren up the stairs and follows her a half a step behind._ _

__“How old is she?”_ _

__Christie seems surprised that the questions have already started, but she answers, herding Abby into a dining and cooking area that looks like it used to be the hotel kitchen._ _

__“Fifteen.”_ _

__“She’s just a kid.”_ _

__“We didn’t recruit her as much as we saved her from getting herself into trouble. She insisted on helping people, so she’d sneak into hospitals as a fake intern and heal people. She’d go to emergency waiting rooms too. I broke my nose and was lucky enough to find her; figured I’d snag her before she got caught.”_ _

__“And what would happen if she’d gotten caught?”_ _

__“Mental institution, probably. Or worse.”_ _

__Abby doesn’t have to ask what she means by ‘worse’. She’s had visions of medical tests and nameless horrors in her head since she was Lauren’s age._ _

__Christie peeks toward the stairs, then leans a little like what she’s saying is important to keep quiet._ _

__“She’s an orphan. She used to have two siblings; we can’t get out of her what happened to them but she says she has no family and we don’t want to push.”_ _

__Abby changes topics, clearing her throat, feeling as if that might have been an invasion._ _

__“She said there were four of you.”_ _

__“Yeah. Me, her, Shannon, and Heather. Heather’s eighteen. She’ll be moving to college soon. We came across her last year, only about two months after we found each other, and she wanted to finish school and go to college, so...that’s what she’s doing. Lauren’s in school, too.”_ _

__“They’re so young.”_ _

__She knows she’s stuck on it, but she can’t get it out of her head- a high schooler, and a college freshman, and two women helping raise them that can’t be much older than her._ _

__It’s crazy. She wants to be a part of it._ _

__[ . . . ]_ _

__She stays overnight. It’s not until she wakes up on their couch at nine in the morning that she panics and realizes she never went home to Sarah. Christie’s in the next room making breakfast when she stumbles in, and there’s a girl slumped over onto the table that she doesn’t recognize and Lauren pouring cereal._ _

__“Good morning!”_ _

__It comes from Lauren, and it’s so chipper; Abby can’t imagine what it’d be like to be that age and without a family and isn’t sure that she wants to. She /does/ have an inexplicable urge to squeeze Lauren half to death, which she ignores._ _

__“Good morning. Uh- do you guys have a phone?”_ _

__They don’t, but Christie scrapes together some change and sends her down the street to the nearest payphone._ _

__Abby gets Sarah’s voicemail. She must be in class, but it still feels wrong to leave the voice message she does: “I’m fine, I’m safe, I’ll be home when you get there.” Home doesn’t feel like home anymore, not even on her lips. There’s something these strangers have that she wants, some freedom to do what she knows she wants to do that’s pulling her in._ _

__The girl slumped over the table looks up when she comes back and grins, pointing at Abby’s shirt._ _

__“What?”_ _

__“Your shirt, ‘s on inside out.”_ _

__“Seriously?”_ _

__She checks and the girl- Heather, probably- is right. She’s been wearing the stupid shirt inside out since she got up yesterday and put it on. When she looks up the girl’s holding out her hand, all messy hair and bright-eyed smile._ _

__“I’m HAO.”_ _

__“I figured. I’m Abby.”_ _

__“You can lift cars?”_ _

__“Among other things, I guess. Superstrength.”_ _

__HAO puffs up a little, stirring into her cereal, and proudly tells Abby that she can outrun anything shy of a plane. Probably. She hasn’t tried yet but she intends to. Abby is caught for a few minutes between wanting to go to Sarah’s and wanting to stay and take the extra bowl that she’s assuming that is there for her. Eventually her hunger wins out, partially because she knows that if she got Sarah’s voicemail then she must have class._ _

__She listens to HAO chatter on about college, and she eats, but mostly she watches. Shannon has a scanner, but she has headphones attached like she doesn’t want to disturb anyone; when she sees Abby watching she waves a little but doesn’t say anything. Lauren pokes into HAO’s conversation- or monologue, really- a lot, usually sarcastically, and Abby’s laughing into her cereal already by the time Christie joins the three of them at the table with her toast._ _

__It’s easier just to sit there with the kids. Once Christie’s there Abby feels like she’s got some sort of test to pass, or at the very least she feels like she’s being carefully watched, and she wants this girl’s acceptance so badly she can’t even question why._ _

__In the middle of HAO explaining why she’s majoring in Education- a full ride to SUNY Purchase- and minoring in gender studies, Cheney looks up from her bowl and right at Abby._ _

__“Are you staying with us?”_ _

__Abby half-chokes on the spoonful in her mouth, and tries to put her spoon down as gracefully as possible, thumping her chest. Before she answer she glances over at Christie, who’s buttering her toast, and then at Shannon, who she’s not sure even heard the question. HAO’s expecting an answer too, she can tell. She treads carefully, afraid to use up their goodwill._ _

__“I- I didn’t know that was an option.”_ _

__Christie shrugs._ _

__"The offer's there, if you'd like it. We'd love to have you. I figure...people like us ought to stick together."_ _

__Abby mulls over 'people like us', unsure of the connotation and surprised that it doesn't sound negative. That it doesn't sound like "freaks". Christie must take her silence for dubiousness because she continues, and it's more than Abby expected to hear._ _

__"I know it sounds crazy. Two twenty-somethings trying to raise kids that aren't theirs and saving lives in their free time- I know. But there's so much we can do to help, and I know you know that. We could really use your help."_ _

__Nobody's ever wanted Abby's help before._ _

__[ . . . ]_ _

__Abby tells them she'll think about it, but she doesn't know /what/ to think._ _

__Sarah's just leaving when she gets there, and it jars her- that means class is starting now and she was home when the call came in. When she notices Abby she pales a little, then flushes bright pink, and Abby smiles, thinking she's a surprise and not a disappointment._ _

__"I thought you were dead."_ _

__Abby chokes a little, mostly at the accusation in Sarah's voice._ _

__"I called."_ _

__"Yeah, at ten. Your note said you'd be back, and...you weren't. What was I supposed to think?"_ _

__Her point is solid, but Abby very suddenly doesn't want to admit it. She can't imagine making a choice other than the one she made, and yet somehow she still feels guilty- probably it's the look on Sarah's face._ _

__"There are others. Like me, I mean- they found me last night. Like a team, kind of."_ _

__In her head she hears "family", but for now "team" is close enough. Sarah crosses her arms; there are people walking past and they both know how important it is to be subtle and vague._ _

__"So you went home with them?"_ _

__"They want me to join them. They're trying to help people."_ _

__She's expecting an argument, so she's not prepared for it when Sarah softens and comes close, reaching up to adjust the hood on Abby's sweatshirt._ _

__"That's what you want, right?"_ _

__“I thought you were mad at me?”_ _

__Sarah laughs a little, but Abby can hear that it’s a sad laugh, and the juxtaposition makes her cringe._ _

__“I’m scared. Not mad.”_ _

__And she looks it- that’s when Abby realizes how different the two things are. She had thought that Sarah was mad, but _scared_ is something so much different. The idea that Sarah had been scared for her sends a shiver down her spine. The last time someone cared that much about her was in college when she still kept in touch with her parents and her older, more successful siblings._ _

__She comes to a decision then and there, driven by Sarah’s hand on her collar and the memory of her unwavering voice: “I love you”._ _

__“I’m gonna tell them no.”_ _

__“Don’t do that. Don’t...give up your dream for me.”_ _

__“But I wanna be with _you_. I don’t want to scare you. Or worry you, or anything.”_ _

__“I don’t want you with me if you could be with them instead. You told me you wanted to help people, and this is your chance to do that, and even if the way you dealt with it last night was kind of stupid it’s still the right thing to do. You belong with them.”_ _

__“You don’t even know them!”_ _

__Abby’s never raised her voice at Sarah before and it’s especially strange because they’re still out on the sidewalk. The man walking past them kind of glances their way, then looks down again like he knows he shouldn’t have overheard. Abby lowers her voice, but Sarah’s already lifted her hand- from Abby’s collar to her cheek._ _

__“I know that if they want you they must be pretty smart.”_ _

__[ . . . ]_ _

__It’s not a breakup. Not really._ _

__She knows that, and even if she didn’t Sarah said it, but it /feels/ like a breakup, so instead of going back to Christie’s she wanders around for hours. She uses the money she has on her to buy herself lunch and tries not to think about the decision at hand, or the fact that Sarah’s tried to make it for her, but inevitably she fails._ _

__She wants Sarah. She wants the security of a body close at night, and the surprise and the strength of having someone love her. She wants the meaningful looks and the loaded smiles and the companionship._ _

__But she also wants to be a hero._ _

__She keeps thinking of Lauren and HAO, and imagining what it would have been like if she’d had some kind of support as a kid struggling to go through puberty with a superpower. It was bad enough she was going through puberty- on top of it discovering that she didn’t like guys the way she was ‘supposed’ to- but on top of it having to worry that shaking someone’s hand might end in an ER visit? Had been awful. Lauren and Heather don’t have to worry like that. They’re surrounded by people who understand and care and try to help them acclimate. And even without the powers, that makes Shannon and Christie heroic; the fact that they save lives or at least try to on top of that is enough to make Abby itch to go back._ _

__When she does get back to Sarah’s, it’s time to eat again and she’s wasted a whole day trying not to make a decision. She gets into the lobby of the apartment building and there are suitcases waiting for her at the desk. Just two, but she knows that’s enough to hold all her things. There’s no note. She doesn’t need one._ _

__[ . . . ]_ _

__They welcome her back without any question, and the next three days are so filled with getting into the groove of things that Abby can almost forget._ _

__She manages until she gets to bed, but then it comes back, and she misses Sarah so badly that she wants to punch something. Or cry. She’d prefer to punch. In the end the lonliness gets the best of her and she _does_ cry, a little, but when she wakes up the next morning there’s a definite feeling of loss that’s almost better than the hanging dread of losing._ _

__Shannon's the one to stay back with Lauren when it comes time, a week later, to move HAO into college. Purchase is about an hours drive, and Abby insists that Heather get the front seat of their rental because its her day. It's north, and it's pretty, in places; it reminds Abby a little of Rochester even though they're nowhere near it and she wonders if her parents miss her._ _

__It'd be hard to notice, she thinks. The youngest child is usually spoiled, but save for her "psychotic break" in high school Abby had been easy to forget. With six, missing one isn't so bad. It's not that they don't love her- because they all do- its more that she's pretty sure they never really _saw_ her. _ _

__But it's nice to think that maybe they worry._ _

__SUNY's campus isn't particularly pretty but HAO is beside herself when they pull in and start hauling boxes. Abby carries less than she knows she can, because she doesn't want to look suspicious, and Heather leads the way with two duffle bags and a suitcase. Her roommate is a timid, mousy type who politely disappears to let them unpack, and so they do- it only takes one more trip back from the car to get everything in, and when they're done Heather flops down onto her back on her new and unmade bed._ _

__"I never thought I'd get to be here."_ _

__Christie ruffles her hair, laughing a little._ _

__"Don't mess up. I don't wanna have to come get you after track and field tryouts, or anything."_ _

__"Am I _allowed_ to try out?"_ _

__"That depends," Abby says, "would you like to compete against me in the discus throw?"_ _

__HAO pulls a face and Christie laughs and it feels like a family, even if it's a dorm room and not a home in Rochester._ _

__"Okay, fine, I get your point. I'll just bitterly watch."_ _

__"You'll get over it."_ _

__When they leave, Heather practically tackles Abby, like they're sisters and not people who've known each other for two weeks. Abby hugs back, surprised by the affection that threatens to strangle her, but letting it run its course. When Heather hugs Christie, tucking her face into the older girl's neck, Abby looks away- it still feels like there are things she shouldn't understand yet, and this is one of them._ _

__[ . . . ]_ _

__

__In mid-September she writes a letter._ _

__She holds the paper between her fingers when it’s written, trying to decide whether her handwriting is legible; she has to write gently even with a pen and sometimes that means that letters get a little confused. It’s the idea that counts, but even so she goes over the letter again in pen, filling in any holes she can find, marking her words darker to make them feel more concrete. It’s not the same as hands in back pockets, it’s not as simple as a kiss pressed to a forehead, but it’s something, and it’s real and raw, and she hopes that Sarah doesn’t just tear it up and throw it out._ _

__It’s an apology. It’s a concession._ _

__She sends it from a P.O. box to maintain the anonymity of ‘headquarters’ and in four days there’s something waiting for her when she checks._ _

__She had apologized for the fight, because she feels as if she started it, but mainly the point of her letter had been to tell Sarah that she had been right. Christie’s little family is where Abby _belongs_. She’s not sure how she can tell. It might be that they trust her so easily and so quickly, or it might be sitting up late with Lauren tutoring her in Algebra, or it might be something else entirely, but she knows. They’ve saved twenty seven lives already. She notches them off on a piece of paper she keeps under her mattress._ _

__She wasn't sure whether to sign it "I love you" or "I miss you" but she had just signed it "yours", and Sarah signed hers "love" and that makes everything different. She wants them to meet and she chooses the diner where they first ate together._ _

__Christie walks in when Abby's getting dressed and immediately her eyebrows raise._ _

__"That's a different plaid than usual. Hot date?"_ _

__Abby flushes, pulling at her collar, but she knows it's a joke and she's giving herself away. Christie catches it and grins, crossing her arms and leaning against Abby's doorframe._ _

__"Wait, really?"_ _

__"She's not- it's not a date."_ _

__"Who is she?"_ _

__Abby has to pause again, because she's not sure how to answer without contradicting herself. Sarah's never referred to them as anything in particular, and the way both their lives work it feels wrong to say that they're dating. All Abby knows for sure is that she loves Sarah and Sarah loves her, but that's not an acceptable answer either._ _

__"Someone important."_ _

__"Does she know about your power?"_ _

__"Yeah. I was living with her before."_ _

__Lauren peeks her head over past Christie's shoulder, and Abby startles, just realizing that their conversation had been three-way. She remembers suddenly and violently Lauren's explanation of her power- that it was God's gift- and panics, afraid that her involvement with Sarah will change the way Lauren sees her._ _

__She's not sure what she's expecting, but Lauren slips into the room and into her closet and she stands there dumbfounded until the young girl presses a solid blue button-down into her hands._ _

__"This is better, with your gray jeans."_ _

__"What?"_ _

__"Plaid says, 'I care, but not enough to dress up'. The solid blue says, 'I care, but not /too/ much'. Plus, blue is vulnerable. And sexy."_ _

__Abby's jaw drops and Christie loses it, trying to hide her laughter in her shoulder._ _

__" _Sexy_?"_ _

__"Yeah. Isn't that what you want?"_ _

__"I- I want to not have that conversation with you, I think."_ _

__Lauren shrugs, laying the button down out on Abby's bed and going back into the closet for the jeans. Christie nudges a still horrified and indignantly blushing Abby with her elbow._ _

__"She's fifteen, not ten."_ _

__"I didn't even know what 'sexy' _was_ when I was fifteen."_ _

__Over her shoulder as she smooths out the shirt, Lauren adds her final two cents: "If you ask me, you still kinda don't."_ _

__[ . . . ]_ _

__“You look great.”_ _

__Abby blushes immediately, pulling Sarah’s chair out from the table a little too hard so that it comes off the ground and she has to put it back for Sarah to sit in it. Mentally she checks herself, reminds herself to stay as calm as she can, no matter how nervous she is inside._ _

__“I...got a little fashion advice.”_ _

__“I don’t just mean the shirt,” Sarah laughs, “I mean, you look....you look happy.”_ _

__Abby takes her seat, resting her elbows on the table and leaning in. Sarah looks good, too. Tired, but good, like she always does._ _

__“Is that new?”_ _

__It scares her to think that it might be. She loves Sarah, but she’s not sure if ‘happy’ is what she felt when Sarah was her whole life. Things are better now. Things are more _complete_ now, even without Sarah, and that in and of itself is terrifying for Abby. Sarah seems to consider this, looking over the menu even though Abby knows she knows it by heart, and is going to get a chicken BLT just like she always does._ _

__“I don’t know. I guess so, yeah. Or maybe just a different kind of happy.”_ _

__“I miss you.”_ _

__She feels childish saying it, especially when Sarah hasn’t said anything yet that makes this feel like anything even remotely romantic, but Sarah puts the menu down and looks up to make eye contact for the first time that night, with a crooked smile that makes Abby’s chest tight._ _

__“I miss you, too.”_ _

__[ . . . ]_ _

__In the end there’s never another discussion._ _

__Sarah kisses her goodnight, and Abby takes it a little further, but she goes home to headquarters not knowing when she’ll see Sarah again. She figures she’ll keep the P. O. box, so that Sarah can reach her if she wants another night, or an afternoon, or a few days._ _

__She goes back home and sleeps it off and when she wakes up the next morning still in her jeans and crumpled shirt, she wishes she’d bothered to try for another kiss. ‘Just one more’ is never quite enough, somehow. Not with Sarah._ _

__She goes on saving lives and one by one they pick out others like them, women in the city, all strong in their own ways, some tall, some short, some loud, some quiet, but all heroes, in their way. And she starts to try to reconcile herself with the idea that she changes lives, and that makes her, in some sense, heroic. Or at the very least, ‘good’._ _

__Until the night where she helps a weepy, shaking twenty-something off the curb ten years later, it doesn’t hit her that ‘hero’ might be the right word, after all._ _


	3. ashlyn and ali

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's definitely not love at first sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is t+ because there are ~sexual themes~ but it's not explicit so i'm not moving it up to m unless you guys really want me to.

They cover her eyes with a cool cloth to keep the light out when they bring the fluorescent near her face. It's the only kindness they're going to extend, she knows; she clenches her whole body in anticipation of the first of many wires. 

Weekly. 

Weekly for as long as she can remember they have strapped her to this table and monitored her breathing and brain activity and blood levels, piping in birdsong or wildlife noises or particular smells to see if her reactions change. They have never shared with her outright any of what they find but she always leave feeling vaguely like a disappointment. 

The procedure to monitor her brain activity is minimally invasive but they apparently didn't bother to make it comfortable. Even in week 936 of testing- she overhears one of them say it- the whole thing still hurts and cramps her up. 

The wings make it hard to lie still. 

It's her eighteenth birthday today. It doesn't make any difference except that each year on her birthday they allow her three hours of supervised free flight time outside the compound; there's an anklet that will shock her to the ground if she goes too far but she's never bothered to try. The thought of that is what gets her through that day's testing. They have her identifying bird sounds first. 

Crows; harsh and high. Ravens, throaty and low and achingly familiar as always. Whippoorwills, with their long, looping cries, swallows with the three levels of urgency (the highest hurts to listen to and makes her strain not to press against her restraints). 

Then predator sounds. The shriek of a golden eagle (they pipe it so that it sounds as if it's coming closer, and there's a part of her that always panics even though she knows it's fake and she's much larger than the bird is anyway), and others that make this section seem longer than anything else. 

Her least favorite is the smell test. 

They start with various berries; she knows she can smell them and the others can't. Some are poisonous and some are edible and some are strictly seasonal and she usually gets at least one wrong, but today she doesn't and she feels proud despite the wires and the cuffs against her arms and legs. 

Other animals. Chipmunks, mice, frogs, things shes never smelled in real life that she knows, either from some kind of instinct or from repeatedly getting them wrong. The overwhelming mess of smells makes her queasy but it never stops when she wants it to. 

The carrion comes last. 

They don't ask her to identify anything, they just pipe in the smells of dead things and see what happens. 

What happens, as is always the case, is that Ali's stomach churns and she starts to sweat. Each time she swears she's going to vomit before they cut the smells off. 

She's so weak and woozy that when they cut off the restraints she lays there for another half a minute breathing before she even dares to sit up.

“Go wash up,” her testing supervisor says, helping her off the table and to her feet, “there’s someone we want you to meet.”

.,.

The wall is plexiglass and thinner than any Ashlyn’s ever seen in the compound. They let her free to walk around because there’s nothing in the room but a heavy table (she can’t lift it, she tries just to see).

She kicks the wall.

The anklet zaps her and she hisses at it, hopping on one foot and glaring toward the cameras.

“Remember that today is a privilege,” Jackson says from over the loudspeaker, and Ashlyn spits. She hates them. She hates that they have her /excited/ for whatever new torture they’re about to introduce her to.

The girl they lead into the other side of the glass is shorter than her and prettier than her and in all ways seems like an improved version of whatever it is she’s supposed to be. Her hair is long and dark and looks like it’s softer and thicker. Her eyelashes are ridiculously long, so long that Ashlyn can tell from through a glass wall and across a room, and her tank top exposes the muscle definition in her shoulders and chest and clings to her stomach just enough that Ashlyn can tell that there’s not an inch of her that /isn’t/ muscle, probably.

It’s the wings that render her speechless.

They’re not extended but she can already see they’re longer than hers, and a color she can’t name. It’s black, maybe, but also silver, and gray, and red all at once. She steps up to the wall and presses her palm against it, surprised when the cuff doesn’t zap her.

She recognizes Ali’s handler as Carrie, who was hers until she tried to crawl out a window and became a liability.

“Ashlyn, Ali. Ali, Ashlyn.”

Ali blinks at her, and Ashlyn takes her hand back. Something about the sameness of their names, the alliteration- and the wings- makes Ashlyn jump to a conclusion, and she addresses Jackson by looking up at the camera in the corner.

“So is she the pretty sister?”

“We’re not sisters. We were grown, not born.”

.,.

She doesn’t mean to do it, but it comes out of her mouth anyway, out of sheer nervousness. Ashlyn gives her a look and she knows immediately that they’re not going to get along.

“I know where we came from. Just because I’m version 2.0 doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”

“And just because we both have wings doesn’t mean you know me.”

Carrie disappears, leaving them alone, and then the wall between them is raised and Ali feels naked this close to someone new. She’s never /met/ someone new and until about ten minutes ago she didn’t even realize that she wasn’t the only person in the world composed the way that she is.

Something in the line of Ashlyn’s shoulders and the way she stalks forward is beyond predatory and Ali guesses immediately that her adversary shares some DNA with a species of hawk.

“You’re perfect,” Ashlyn says, but it feels like an accusation, not a compliment. When Ashlyn reaches out to touch her shoulder, Ali flinches and slaps her hand away.

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

Ashlyn lifts a wing, fluttering, stepping a few inches closer and into Ali’s space. Ali panics again- unused to anyone being this close to her, and afraid of what Ashlyn could do- and shoves her.

The wall comes down. Ashlyn’ lunges against it, and Ali bristles, both her wings extending; this is an instinct she’s never felt before and she’s gotten almost as woozy as she did during the carrion test.

This is a test too. She can tell when Carrie comes back in.

It’s the first test she’s ever completely failed.

.,.

Ashlyn knows she’s in trouble the moment they start talking in front of her.

She’s never heard the word “euthanasia” before, but whatever it is, it’s coming, for her /and/ for Ali, and she doesn’t like it. So she does something about it.

The window is manageable, or at least it is once she throws a chair through it. 

It’s hard for them to catch her when she uses her wings to propel her a little faster through the hallway, and they seem reluctant to /hurt/ her, so by the time she reaches the next residential room over- the one she had always thought was empty- there’s only one of them after her, and it’s Jackson. He seems to think he might be able to talk her out of whatever she’s doing, but she’s too far into her anger to hear him at all.

A wing to the face is really all it takes for him to go flying back against the wall, and she’s able to slip into Ali’s room and lock the door behind her before he can come after again.

Ali stands, shocked, while Ashlyn pushes the bookshelf in front of the door, but eventually she gets her wits about her and pushes Ashlyn into the wall, using her hands to brace on Ashlyn’s shoulders.

“I’m not here to hurt you. I don’t have time. They’re gonna do something bad to us.”

“I don’t trust you.”

Outside the door Jackson is knocking, and then slamming his fist into the door, calling for backup. It won’t hold much longer even with the shelf in front of it, and Ashlyn panics a little, kicking Ali in the knee to get herself free.

By the time Ali’s up again and coming after her Ashlyn’s already thrown the second chair out the window, which is just big enough for her to squeeze through, if she tucks in her wings. She doesn’t look back. 

It’s up to Ali to take the out Ashlyn’s given her.

.,.

“I knew you were following me,” Ashlyn says, smiling weakly, but she’s surprised and Ali can tell. She’s also still bleeding from one wing, so Ali kneels over her and applies a little more pressure to the knife wound until Ashlyn hisses under her and the wing twitches from the concentration of pain.

“You’re an idiot,” Ali replies, finally, and Ashlyn’s grin wavers a little. 

“Yeah, well, _one_ of us had to be a birdbrain.”

“You don’t have a birdbrain. All you have is enough Accipiter trivirgatus DNA to give you a mutation in your shoulders and semi-hollow bones. You have a human brain just like anyone else. Feathers are no excuse for acting like an idiot.”

Ashlyn sighs and shifts a little, and Ali can feel the younger girl’s gaze go to her wings, tucked behind her. 

“You seem to know a whole lot about this mutation thing, mind explaining?”

The bleeding has stemmed a little, so Ali ties the ratty piece of cloth as fight as she can and sits back on her heels. Ashlyn tries to sit up, and Ali reaches out to stop her with a palm flat against Ashlyn’s sternum and a sudden blush. She’s never really touched anyone before, needless to say as much as she’s touched Ashlyn in the past few minutes of trying to patch her up. “Let some of the blood come back to your head before you try to sit up and conk out on me,” she says by way of explanation, bringing back some of the things she’d picked up from the countless books she’s read, “didn’t they teach you anything?”

Ashlyn props her feet up on Ali’s lap and grins again, and Ali’d be lying if she didn’t say she was starting to get used to the half-smirk.

“Alright then, Doctor, talk nerdy to me.”

“I don’t know how they did it. I actually don’t even know why they did it, but I’m assuming it had something to do with the military or genetic recombination or something like that. Genetic recombination is, like-”

“I know what genetic recombination is, Einstein, I’ve read just as many stupid boring books as you.”

Something about that surprises Ali, maybe because Ashlyn projects as insufferably stupid, but she takes a second to recollect before she keeps going, chewing her lip.

“It didn’t work the way they wanted it to. I don’t know what they wanted when they...created me, or whatever it is that they did, but I didn’t come out right, so they tried it again with you.”

Ashlyn outright laughs, her shoulders coming up a little, and then winces at the pain that brings, but tries to cover it up as fast as possible so Ali won’t notice. 

“Well, that backfired,” she says, by way of continuing the conversation. Ali shakes her head. 

“I guess so. They wanted other parts of the avian DNA to be transferred, like...instincts, or vocalizations, or something like that, I guess, but no matter what they did I- we- were just humans with wings.”

Ashlyn’s not sure she believes that, but Ali seems to, and she doesn’t want to argue. She’s suddenly struck by memories of testing, especially the earlier years, and wonders if they treated Ali any better. Something about the look on her face suggests that they didn’t.

For Ali, the memories come rushing back too crisply and she stands up, shaking out her wings and tilting her head up to the sky. They need food and water and clean something for Ashlyn’s wing, maybe painkllers, too, if she can get them, and while it’s difficult to reconcile herself with the idea of stealing she knows better than to think there’s any other way.

.,.

Ashlyn’s up maybe two minutes after Ali’s taken off, ignoring the pain in her wing and heading right for the pile she managed to make off with before the psycho with a knife had caught her. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing- a thermal sleeping bag, a water bottle, an empty day pack, a solar-powered flashlight and a compass. No binoculars; her own raptor vision was good enough. No water purifier, too heavy. No tent, too cumbersome. 

It’s cold, though, and it’s threatening to rain or snow, so she knows that the sleeping bag isn’t going to be enough. When she tries to take off, the pain in her wing becomes crippling and she tumbles to the ground, frustrated and embarrassed. The best she can do is hop and use her good wing to propel her a little higher, and that’s exactly what she does, purposely knocking herself into low tree branches until she has a nice little collection and a few scratches on her upper arms.

She picks the twigs and leaves out of her hair and her clothes and her feathers, and then she goes to work setting up some kind of makeshift shelter. She’s seen pictures of this kind of thing before, tent-like but conical, with the sticks set up in a circle and tied together at the top. It takes her a while before she remembers the name- a teepee- and when she does she’s inordinately proud of herself and immediately thinks up some way to throw the name in Ali’s face when she gets back.

That turns out to be sooner than she expected. She’s just draping her jacket around the teepee when Ali’s voice from behind and above her startles her so badly that she jumps, jarring her bad wing again- “What are you doing?”

“I’m making a-”

“Teepee. Yeah. I see that. Why?”

Her chance at proving her intelligence ruined, Ashlyn pouts a little, crossing her arms. 

“Cause it’s gonna rain and all we have is a sleeping bag.”

“Since when is there a ‘we’?” 

Ali drops to the ground, tucking her wings neatly behind her again and digging in her satchel- the only thing she had bothered to take with her from the compound- for the things she’d managed to take before the nausea and guilt had overwhelmed her.

Ashlyn doesn’t know how to answer that. She had sort of assumed that Ali wrapping her wing wound had meant they were in this together, but insecurity takes over until she sees what Ali’s got. 

“Well, I’m assuming you didn’t steal the rubbing alcohol and bandages for you,” she replies, getting some of her snark back, “and it’s not like there are hundreds of other random mutants waiting around to sympathize with you.”

Ali sighs and tosses a bag of chips at Ashlyn’s face before dropping to her knees and spreading the rest of her haul out on the ground: bandages, rubbing alcohol, a bottle of water, a bag of trail mix, and a bag of sunflower seeds.

“You couldn’t have gotten some real food?” Ashlyn mock-whines, pushing at the sunflower seeds with one boot-clad foot, “like, I get that you’re a crow, or whatever, but this is some serious bird food if I’ve ever seen any.”

Ali shoves at Ashlyn’s foot and glares up at her for a moment before grabbing the seeds and trail mix and shoving them back in her bag. 

“It’s white-necked raven, not crow, first of all,” she says through gritted teeth, “and I’m human, mostly. I’m not gonna parade around calling you a hawk. It’s the same thing.”

“I wish you would. Anyway, it’s still bird food, no matter what kind of bird.”

“Trail mix has nuts in it, nuts have healthy fats in them and they’re high in all kinds of vitamins and minerals and fibers and protein that you need to keep going. A handful of trail mix goes a lot longer than a bag of Cheetos.”

“And yet, you stole me a bag of Cheetos, too.”

“In hopes that it’d shut you up for five minutes.”

And it does, sort of. Ashlyn’s mostly quiet while Ali pours out some rubbing alcohol onto the cut in her wing, though she makes a soft noise through clenched teeth that Ali knows instinctively is a noise of pain. She’s quiet through the bandaging, and she even lets Ali eat her sunflower seeds in peace, but when the air grows thick and heavy around them she stops being companionable and goes right back to being annoying: “If we’re not a ‘we’, does that mean I get the sleeping bag?”

It’s not an invitation, it’s a challenge, and Ashlyn is pleasantly surprised when Ali takes that challenge and attempts to fit into the sleeping bag with her. It’s big enough for two people, not two people with wings, so Ashlyn- who’s taller by maybe an inch or two- tries to compensate by fanning hers out, keeping them above the line of the sleeping bag. This leaves Ali with her head resting dangerously close to Ashlyn’s stomach, the sleeping bag bunched up to her wrists, and neither of them does anything until it starts to rain.

The back of Ali’s head is pressed against the sticks that make up her end of the shelter, so she’s still getting pretty wet until she scoots forward, her shoulder brushing against Ashlyn’s secondaries, and rests her head on Ashlyn’s abdomen like they’re close friends or something else. It’s nice, the weight of Ali on her stomach, but she knows better, instinctively, than to say anything about it. Instead Ashlyn tucks her hands behind her head and lets the rain lull her to sleep.

.,.

It takes them three days to figure out where the closest city is, and in those three days Ashlyn’s wing heals enough for her to fly in low swoops like Ali does. It feels strange, but if she goes back to the rapid flapping now she knows she’s just going to end up hurting herself again, so she deals with it. 

A lot of things can change in three days. For one, Ali’s not so sure how much she hates Ashlyn anymore. Sure, the younger girl is annoying and abrasive and way too full of herself, but then she was also raised in a government compound and she’s the only one who will ever even begin to be able to understand the nightmares that make her wake up in a cold sweat night after night.

And maybe that’s what she likes the most about Ashlyn- she doesn’t ask. She doesn’t need to.

“It’s not going to be this easy to steal in the city,” she says, leaning over their little fire and the tin of beans that Ashlyn’s warming over it. 

“You don’t have to mother me,” is Ashlyn’s immediate reply, but it’s not sarcasm or a joke, there’s something heavier behind it that makes Ali backpedal a little. 

“I’m not. I’m- I just want you to be safe.”

“You don’t even like me,” Ashlyn laughs, but the light is back in her eyes again. She takes the can away from the fire and fishes two plastic spoons out of her daypack, handing Ali one. Ali doesn’t bother to refute that because she knows Ashlyn’s just rubbing it in her face that they’ve grown on each other, and she’s too hungry to start an argument. They take turns with the can, and she can tell that Ashlyn’s restraining herself so when the pangs of hunger in her stomach have stopped she refuses to take her turn. 

“You’re still healing,” she says, by way of explanation, “you need it more. And anyway, you won’t eat the sunflower seeds.”

It’s true, but Ashlyn still feels a little awkward finishing the can off by herself, especially when Ali brushes through her hair with her fingers and pushes it away from her neck and Ashlyn can see the hollow below her collarbone. Ali catches her staring and swats at her own shoulder- “What? What’s on me?”- and Ashlyn feels herself blush so violently she could swear Ali can see it even in the relative darkness.

“Bug,” she mutters through the last mouthful of beans, “gone now.”

.,.

It only bothers Ali once she’s in the city that she doesn’t know what it’s like to touch someone.

Humans are _always_ touching each other. That’s not something they had taught her, and not something she had expected, and it throws her for a loop. The first night, when they find the roof of a warehouse with a half-collapsed maintenance shed, she crouches right at the edge of the building and looks down at the people thirty stories below and wonders how these people can feel safe like that, confined to the ground. Touching. Always touching, arm to elbow, hand to hip, head to shoulder.

The only person who’s ever touched her without a glove on is Ashlyn.

“They _smell_ ,” Ashlyn says, joining her on the ledge, tucking her hands under her wings. “I didn’t expect that. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t that.”

“I think that’s the lake,” Ali says, nodding toward the flat grayness in the distance. 

“Michigan, I mean. I think you’re smelling Lake Michigan.”

She goes back to watching the people on the sidewalk, and Ashlyn frowns, lifting her head to look towards the water. 

“You don’t smell it?” she asks, genuinely confused, and Ali shakes her head. 

“You have better senses than I do, remember? Bird of prey.” 

From somewhere in the distance, a gull or something calls out, and Ashlyn is distracted again before she answers. 

“Birds of prey are dumb.”

Ali smiles. Ashlyn’s started to pick up on the little things that can get that reaction, and one of those things is any kind of sentiment that reminds Ali how smart she is. Even if Ali wants to blame it on the raven DNA- which Ashlyn is pretty sure is a stupid thing to do- it’s something she likes about herself, so Ashlyn brings it up as much as possible. 

After all, it’s also something she likes about Ali.

In exchange, Ali opens up a little, tilting her head and letting Ashlyn hear what she can’t stop thinking: “Touching is a big thing for humans. I mean, for us. For- you know.” 

Ashlyn nods, because she does know, but instead of watching the pedestrians she watches Ali watch them and gets the idea.

“I think they were afraid to touch us,” she says, after a little while. It’s the first time either of them have spoken about _them_ , the people from the compound, since the day of her injury. It reopens a different kind of wound, and she has to take a moment to collect her thoughts before she tries again. Now Ali’s looking at her, and the wind off the lake is blowing her hair all over and stealing the words off Ashlyn’s lips. 

“I think they were afraid of us.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” Ali says. Ashlyn smiles, and there in Chicago is where their hands meet for the first time.

.,.

Ali starts sneaking into University classes as soon as fall turns to winter. 

She comes back windblown and bright-eyed every night, and Ashlyn is equal parts curious and baffled by it. First of all, for someone so concerned with safety, sneaking into classes at the University of Chicago is downright idiotic, not that Ali cares no matter how many times Ashlyn brings it up- but it’s more than that. It seems futile. They’re going to die in the cold one of these nights, probably, and all Ali can think about are books and professors.

“I don’t understand why you’re even bothering,” Ashlyn says, tucking in the sides of the tarp they’ve been using to trap heat in the shed, “what could you possibly want to learn?”

“Everything,” Ali says, smiling with her teeth. Ashlyn feels a compulsion then that she doesn’t even know how to begin to name, something that tugs forward at her chest and warms her face and her fingers and her toes and makes her stop what she’s doing just to breathe. 

The touching has grown on both of them. It was strange in the beginning, if their hands met over a bag or a tin, but as soon as they started looking for it, it started to become a comfort. Now Ali can’t sleep without her head resting on Ashlyn’s shoulder and an arm slung around Ashlyn’s waist. 

That night it’s something about botany or microbiology that puts Ashlyn to sleep, even though she tries to be attentive. The thing is, she’s warm for the first time all day, and Ali’s pressed up next to her in the sleeping bag and just barely brushing against Ashlyn’s primary feathers when she talks with her hands, and botany is boring as anything. Her eyelids start to droop partway through a sentence about ‘fundamental life processes’, and Ali trails off, feeling the stupidest surge of affection for this girl who actually has started to try to stay awake for this.

Botany’s boring. Even Ali can admit that botany’s boring. She’s not going to the classes strictly because she loves to learn; she’s going to the classes because learning is the only way for her to get any power back. The more she understands the world around her, the less she feels shackled by nightmares.

“You were talking about jumping beans,” Ashlyn says, like she thinks Ali’s forgotten, and Ali smiles, burrowing deeper into the sleeping bag until she accidentally nudges against a foot that’s not hers. 

“Jumping genes, actually, but I appreciate the effort.”

Ashlyn doesn’t even know the meaning of ‘warm’ until Ali’s nose is pressed against her neck.

.,.

It snows in late November, two days after Thanksgiving. It doesn’t snow enough to makes much of a difference, but Ali is beside herself and it gives Ashlyn the stupidest idea.

“Are you gonna tell me where we’re going, or are you gonna make me guess?”

Ashlyn tugs at Ali’s hand until they’re both at the edge of the roof, and then she turns her gaze to the southwest, eyes stinging at the wind. 

“Aon Center,” she says, when she decides that keeping it a secret is futile anyway, “fifth-tallest building in the United States.”

She’s not even sure what there is to see from the top, and even once they’re there she’s not sure she understands the hype, but it’s worth it when they land on the roof of the office building and Ali lights up like a high-rise herself.

The snow is starting to stick to Ali’s dark hair and feathers when she leans over the edge of the roof and looks out at the lights and the way they play off of the water of the lake. Her fingers are numb almost immediately, but she can’t tear her eyes away- she’s too busy watching the wind change the currents, following the paths of people who are wandering along the docks, wishing it’d snow more.

“You’re gonna get frostbite,” Ashlyn mutters past her scarf. “This was an awful idea.”

She doesn’t even think twice before she grabs Ali’s hands and tucks them into the front pockets of her own jacket, but then she panics a little. Ali looks down at where they’re joined, four hands in two pockets, and then up at Ashlyn with snow sticking in her eyelashes.

Ali doesn’t know how these things work. She knows the taxonomy of hundreds of birds, but she doesn’t know what romance is supposed to feel like, or when to kiss someone, or how to kiss someone, and she’s never even thought about it until right then, when Ashlyn’s eyes drop to her lips. She doesn’t know how she knows, but she knows what that means. It’s an instinct. It’s the same instinct that makes her lean forward, hooking her hands in Ashlyn’s coat pockets and pulling them close together, but that’s where she stops.

It’s Ashlyn who finally moves to touch her lips to Ali’s for the first time.

They both freeze like that, not breathing, until Ali takes her hands out of Ashlyn’s pockets to grab the front of her coat and pull her down into the kiss, leaning forward until they’re pressed front-to-front. Whatever instincts were programmed out of her, this is not one of them; their lips move together like they’ve done this a million times and her entire body feels like it’s on fire. Ashlyn eventually steadies herself with her hands on Ali’s hips and they part, breaths coming fast and shallow and visible in the air and the snow falling thicker now.

“Whoa.”

“That was- I think I need to try that again.”

They do try it again, but this time their noses bump first and they’re laughing when they kiss, Ashlyn holding Ali close by her hips and Ali’s fingers pressed inside the collar of Ashlyn’s coat. It’s the first time of many, and it feels that way- like they could be doing this for ages and never tire of it.

.,.

They don’t die that winter.

In the spring they pack up and move on, following the lake northward to Traverse City. They last about a week there in Hull Park, on the banks of the smaller Boardman Lake, before there’s a shooting across the street from the park and Ali hauls them out of there like bats out of Hell, all puns aside. The cities start to make her nervous, the sound of gunshots always following her, so Ashlyn changes their course to Huron’s national forest and settles them on the water again.

It’s in Huron that they do more than kiss for the first time.

Ashlyn touches Ali over her clothes, trying to figure out the planes of her body, all sharp angles from their half-life diet and warm in the spring dampness that surrounds them. She feels wild, like she can hardly control herself, but she also doesn’t know what she’s doing, just that she’s doing what seems right, and Ali watches her, not sure how to help.

Her hands stop over Ali’s stomach like she’s not sure what to do, their lips a few inches apart, so Ali grabs them and moves them up- she’s read more now than she ever thought she would bother to read about things like this- and Ashlyn’s eyes fall to her own hands, and the exploration begins in earnest.

.,.

They leave the forest after a few weeks when the hunger gets too bad to maintain themselves off of the few little rest stops they can steal from and they’re forced into the city again. This time they settle in Detroit.

In Detroit Ali gets Ashlyn’s shirt off and teaches her what she thinks she’s learned. In Detroit they both start attending classes at the Institute of Technology and play like they’re transit students, which is dangerous but much more fun than Ali going it alone. It’s also where Ashlyn starts to pick up on how sex works, on what it means to be with someone, and how everyone else goes about it.

Things are different between Ali and Ashlyn than they are between the couples Ashlyn sees on campus. They’re more serious, but they’ve never talked about what they do or what it means, and everyone else seems to find it difficult to _stop_ talking about hooking up. 

After about two months in Detroit someone asks them where they’re living and they leave for Toledo, which Ashlyn purposely pronounces ‘To-leh-do’ just to grate Ali, who kisses her to shut her up. 

“That’s how the Spanish city is pronounced,” she mutters against Ashlyn’s lips, and Ashlyn snakes a hand under Ali’s shirt to press her fingers against Ali’s side where she’s most ticklish.

Toledo finds them with Ashlyn’s hand below the waistband of Ali’s jeans.

In Cleveland the weather is warm enough that they sneak out in the middle of the night to swim in Lake Erie, which Ashlyn agrees to even though it smells like fish to her. She doesn’t realize how much Ali loves the water until they get there and Ali pulls her shirt over her head and kicks off her jeans like it’s totally normal. She’s never seen Ali’s body, really- not like this- because they’ve only ever touched in the dark, and it catches her entirely by surprise. 

Ali has her back to the shore and Ashlyn sits there dumbstruck, following the toned lines of Ali’s calves to her thighs and higher, blushing the whole way, blushing until her eyes hit Ali’s shoulders and her extended wings, blacker than the night around them, and she sees that Ali is watching her.

“I don’t want my clothes to get wet,” Ali says, and Ashlyn nods, refraining from the inappropriate jokes she knows she could make and pulling her own shirt over her head.

Ali knows that Ashlyn hasn’t seen through her thinly disguised plan at that exact moment and lets out a long breath, not even bothering to hide the fact that she’s staring. 

The water’s warm.

Their bodies are warmer.

.,.

At first they never stay in one place for longer than two months and they make their way through and around the Great Lakes in a little under a year. They go south, into West Virginia, and spend half a year in the suburbs.

In Clarksburg Ali says “I love you”; in Fairmont Ashlyn says it back.

On the one-year anniversary of the compound breakout they settle in Roanoke and they stay there for two years.

.,.

Two in Roanoke; Ali gets half a public relations degree. 

Two in Petersburg, Ashlyn starts a dog-walking business that grows until people are asking her to start a kennel. 

One in Arlington, one in DC, two in Harrisburg where Ashlyn buys an obscene amount of t-shirts, and then suddenly and without warning they find themselves in New York, Ali chasing the other half of her unofficial degree and Ashlyn chasing significance.

.,.

She finds it on a fire escape in the middle of the night.


	4. kelley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> things go out the window but a stranger stops kelley from following them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER: suicide/ideation. Please read at your own risk; if you're concerned and don't want to read it because of the trigger warning just shoot me a message here or on tumblr and i'll be glad to recap for you, or explain in detail why there's a warming.
> 
> I know that Jerry is younger than Kelley irl, but I wanted him older, and, well...I figure in a universe where she can duplicated and joins a group of rogue lady superheroes that's not too big a liberty to take.

Erin left New York first.

They moved there when Kelley was nine and Erin was ten, and in a way Kelley thinks that Erin never forgave the uprooting. Jerry coped fine, at the awkward age between elementary and middle school, but Erin had hated New York from the moment she got there. Kelley had never been able to understand why, but nobody had been surprised when all of Erin's college choices led her south of the Mason-Dixon. Jerry was already all the way up in Maine, studying marine ecology or something, and Kelley- even at seventeen- hadn't been too shocked when her parents sat her down to talk.

They wanted to move back, to be near where Erin was going to college- Sewanee, in southern Tennessee- but they understood if Kelley didn't want to, not for her last year of high school. They wanted to know if she could come up with any other options; in a matter-of-fact way she told them she could handle living in an apartment on her own for a year with Jerry only an hour's plane ride away.

The way they had told her 'no' had also told her that the 'no' wouldn't last very long, and in the very first stirrings of fall her parents moved South and the apartment was hers.

-

Kelley applied only to two colleges and received acceptance letters to both. When she'd made the decision she wrote her parents an old-fashioned letter and told them she'd be attending Fordham in the fall. 

She didn't tell them about the Sewanee acceptance letter. It didn't matter.

-

At Fordham she struggles to make friends for the first week and then finds herself with so many friends she doesn't know what to do with them. Her second semester she transfers dorms to room with Christen, the communications major who's just patient enough to endure Kelley's up-all-night studying _and_ her sense of humor. 

Two years later Christen's still Kelley's roommate but she's also the first girl Kelley's ever wanted to make out with.

Neither of them have dated in college at all yet and when Kelley brings it up she knows exactly where she's going to take it, whether or not Christen's coming with her.

"Nobody's been interested me," is Christen's excuse, and Kelley crosses the space between their beds without really noticing until she's kneeling at Christen's bedside, "I guess I'm just not interesting enough."

Kelley takes the laptop out of Christen's lap and sets it on the floor without closing it, placing a hand on each of Christen's knees. 

"You're plenty interesting enough. There are definitely people interested in you."

Christen laughs, doing that thing where her eyes get squinty and she throws her head back a little, and Kelley tries in vain not to stare. She's been trying in vain not to stare for at least two months now.

"Yeah? Well, when you find them, let me know."

"I can do that."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I know one already actually. Do you have a gender preference?"

It's a roundabout way to ask it, and Christen smiles a little in confusion, shaking her head like she does when Kelley's done something endearingly dense. Kelley finds that happens more than it needs to; the first time she can remember it happening was in their freshman year when she asked if it was okay to visit with Christen's family at Thanksgiving because hers was so far away.

"You know I don't," Press answers, but she's smart enough to have caught on by now- when Kelley leans in they meet halfway.

-

They continue to meet halfway for the next three semesters. Christen is Kelley's first in every conceivable way, but from the beginning she knows it's not the case coming from the other direction. Christen likes her- she doesn't doubt that for a second- but it's not the same, and their relationship is like a really pretty, ill-fitting pair of shoes. Hard to let go of, especially for someone as stubborn as Kelley and someone as nice as Press is.

Near the end of their last year at Fordham Kelley wonders whether Press is letting her hold on just because she's _too nice_ to make her let go.

It's a balmy near-summer night when Kelley brings it up, afraid that if she doesn't neither of them will. The apartment they've moved into- the one they've shared for two years- has a balcony, and they never eat dinner inside, rain or shine, no matter the temperature. Tonight it's humid enough that Kelley's hair won't stay in a bun or in a ponytail- too much of it comes free and sticks to her forehead and her temples, but she ignores it in favor of her Indian takeout, lifting her foot to nudge Christen's knee under the table.

"Oh, no. This is gonna be serious, isn't it? Can it wait until I've digested this curry?"

"Gross," Kelley laughs, but it doesn't lighten the mood any. "It doesn't have to be serious. I just want to know what you're thinking about graduation."

"Well."

It's the way Christen always answers questions like this, by starting with 'well' and waiting long enough to see whether Kelley will save her from having to continue. This time Kelley waits, the bottom of her foot resting against the bend of Christen's knee.

"I have that job, I mean- the internship, over the summer."

"But..."

Christen sighs, uncomfortable at being called out.

"Why does there have to be a but?"

"Cause there is."

For a while Christen doesn't answer her, and Kelley almost gets annoyed. She tucks her feet back under her and picks at her Vindaloo mutinously before Christen tosses her head and rolls her eyes and says, "If you're waiting for me to tell you I'm going to have to decide between two out of state grad schools, don't bother, okay? I know that you know."

"You didn't even _apply_ in state," Kelley says, dropping her fork. That's the heart of it; Christen didn't even bother to make staying a choice, and Kelley doesn't want to leave.

"I'm ready for a change of pace," Christen says, but she says it in her reporting voice, in her reading-out-loud voice, and Kelley frustratedly pushes the flyaways away from her forehead, hot and on the verge of tears.

"Yeah, but does that include me?"

"Do you want it to?"

-

Christen goes as far as Stanford, and even though Kelley says she'll visit, the betrayal is too deep and too complete for her to really consider it. Not when she'd have a five hour flight to think about the fact that Christen left her without a backwards glance, left her behind for golden beaches and a masters in journalism, and, eventually, a surfer with a peeling tan.

Kelley gets a job working with AMEC as an entry level environmental scientist, pushing data and crunching numbers and learning to write reports. It's a lonely job, because it requires so much of her time, and it's what she loves, but sitting at a cubicle six hours a day just makes her wonder what she's missing. It takes three months before the answer stops being Press.

-

At first she thinks she's just going stir crazy.

Her apartment is a twenty minute walk from her office, and she takes the long walk sometimes just so that it feels like she's _going_ somewhere. Sometimes, if she's lucky, she gets a travel opportunity; on the night it happens the first time she's on her way back from the airport past midnight. She's a block from her apartment, and the wind rattles a fire escape and makes her panic. For a moment she thinks she's going into cardiac arrest or something, like some blood clot she might have gotten on the flight came loose and seized up her heart, because she's seeing double and feeling strange, but when she spins to face the fire escape she _sees_ herself and almost passes out.

She has to clutch the fire escape itself to keep from falling over, but when she comes to her senses she's not seeing double anymore. She writes it off as a panic attack (often one of the symptoms is an 'out of body' sort of feeling, which would almost explain seeing herself).

The second time it happens she's at home alone and the sound of a gunshot on her TV startles her. This time the first one of her stares at the clone of her for a solid thirty seconds before one of them passes out- before _she_ passes out.

-

For the next two weeks she lives in constant fear that it's going to happen again. She doesn't know what 'it' is, but sometimes on her work computer in private browsing she looks up dissociative disorders. 

She doesn't believe in astral projection, or 'spirit walking', and anyway the descriptions she finds of OBE's don't sound like what she's felt. An out of body experience is like floating, and Kelley never felt like she was anything but rooted to the spot. It wasn't like she had lost the casing of her own body, or anything; she can remember the hairs on the back of her own neck standing on end, and her palms going clammy. It was just that there were two of her.

She can't think of any triggers in common except the rush of adrenaline from being startled by something- the rattle of the fire escape the first time and the gunshots in the second- but she can't find anything about out-of-body experiences in any context, scholarly journal or otherwise, that suggests that's a common occurrence. The more she reads about it the less she identifies with it and the more frightened she gets that she might be on an entirely different level.

In the middle of the second week her searches start to switch from OBE's to schizophrenia.

-

The more she thinks about it the more often it happens. She gets to be so scared it's going to happen in public that she quits her job and lives off her savings for a month without talking to anybody, which, all things considered, isn't helping her if she's already going insane. She has days where she feels stable, where she cleans her apartment and takes out the trash and goes to shop for groceries, but most of the time her days are spent trying to figure out what's _wrong_ with her. 

Press calls her after three and a half weeks of Kelley barely speaking to anyone who's not the checkout lady at the supermarket, and the sound of the phone ringing at eleven pm makes her jump.

Her and the other three of her.

She answers the phone but she can't move; it's as if she's seeing from the angles of the other versions of her as well as from her own position. She's not sure if she can control them. All she's sure of is that they can't be real, and wishing them away doesn't help.

"Hi."

"Hey, Kel! I just wanted to call you. I got, like, an urge. It's not too late there, right?"

"Eleven," Kelley says. She can see the rise and fall of her duplicates' chests, like they're breathing too. She wonders what they think of Press. Then she wonders whether Press is actually talking to her at all or if she's talking into an empty line.

"Okay, awesome. You're not busy, right?"

"No. Just a couple of friends over."

Kelley almost laughs at her own joke, the panic seeping into her bloodstream, her entire body prickling. She can hear someone in the background, another voice that sounds male and close to the phone. Close to Christen. It's like a fucking romantic dramedy, the way Kelley can imagine him with his arm around her shoulders, waiting for her to hang up the phone so he can push his fat, chapped lips to hers.

"How are you? I feel like we haven't talked in forever."

"It's been a while. I'm okay. Taking my bite of the big apple, you know."

"Still no urge to come and visit?"

Kelley blinks slowly, and opens her eyes as fast as she can. She thinks she catches the tail end of the clones blinking too, but she's not sure. She reaches over to prod one in the stomach and it's like she's touching a real person. Through the thin, soft fabric of the shirt she can feel its- her- flat stomach, and she goosebumps.

"I'm really busy," Kelley says, hoarsely, "my job's really demanding. Maybe you could come back up here sometime."

More male murmuring, and Christen giggles, and Kelley's fists clench. The others' do, too.

"If you're going to talk to him just hang up the fucking phone, Press."

"Don't do this, Kelley," she says, but there's still a laugh in her voice and it makes Kelley madder.

"Do what? Demand your undivided attention for the duration of a phone call that _you_ made? I'm sorry, is that unreasonable?"

There's a moment of silence and Kelley runs a hand through her hair, but this time she's not even startled when the other Kelleys do too. At least she's not _alone_ now.

"I wanted you to come here to meet him," Christen says, and Kelley laughs bitterly, wiping at the tears that surprise her even as they come.

"I don't want to fucking meet him."

"He's a good guy. You'd like him."

"Did you call me just to tell me that you're fine and dandy without me? Because if you did I think you got the point across just fine, you can hang up any time."

"I'm not going to hang up," Christen says. It's in her reading aloud voice. Kelley feels like she might vomit.

"Fine."

So Kelley's the one who has to hang up. She drops the phone with a clatter and sinks to the ground, crouching, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes and choking back huge, gasping sobs. There's a month's worth of frozen dinners in her refrigerator and enough money to last her at least three more months but other than that there's nothing left of her. Just skin and hair and fingernails and the tears that won't stop coming, half because she's afraid of what she's about to do and half because there isn't any other option anymore.

For a second she considers calling Jerry, but when she opens her eyes the battery has fallen out of her phone and slid across the floor and it feels like a sign. The other Kelleys are gone. She's alone again.

-

The fire escape is close enough to her window that she wonders whether she'll catch on it. She figures if she jumps rather than falls she should clear it just fine; she'd hate to hang there until a fire team came to rescue her or choke herself on her own collar. She's glad she doesn't live on a busy street where someone driving by might be tempted to stop her. Her resolve is weak enough as is.

Kelley closes her eyes, swaying slightly in the breeze, but her instincts kick in and she grips the windowsill until her knuckles are numb. Jump, not fall. It won't matter if she hits a balcony or anything on the way down. It's the sudden change in velocity- from falling to stopped- that accounts for fatality, not hitting the ground, specifically.

She stays there with her eyes closed for almost two minutes, debating whether or not to leave some kind of note. Maybe write her parents a letter before she goes, or even Press, in a halfhearted attempt to make her feel bad. Kelley knows she won't, though. She doesn't want Press to blame herself. She knows her parents won't.

"Hey."

It has to be a Kelley. She ignores it

Kelley rationalizes that she's probably dreaming. For Press to call her out of the blue, for those clones or whatever they are to have appeared so real, she has to be _asleep_ , and maybe she's been asleep a while. She knows that five seconds while you're asleep can amount to hours in a dream, she's read that somewhere before. It's possible she's gone to bed and it _feels_ like she's quit her job and descended into insanity, but she's actually perfectly sane and having some bizarre stress-induced nightmare. 

One of the things that without fail wakes people from their dreams is the sensation of falling. So she's not _really_ committing suicide, she's just waking up. Waking up sounds infinitely more reasonable than suicide. Waking up solves everything, and she'll wake up before she hits the ground, so she won't feel anything. She'll probably wake up the second that sensation of falling hits her. Two, maybe three feet down.

Jump, not fall.

"Hey, can you help me?"

Kelley opens her eyes. 

It's not another Kelley that's talking to her. It's a girl probably her age, with the highest cheekbones she's ever seen, and obscenely long eyelashes, and a calm, insistent voice.

"Sorry. I didn't want to bother you, but I need help."

She's not visibly hurt. She's standing on the fire escape, leaning casually against the edge of it. Kelley wonders if she's a resident; maybe her apartment is on fire or flooding or broken into. 

"I'm kind of busy."

"It's really urgent."

"You don't sound like it's urgent."

The girl laughs, sticking her hand out to shake.

"You're funny. I'm Tobin."

"Nice to meet you, Tobin. Can, uh. You go back to doing whatever you were doing before you came over here?"

There's no logic in dreams. Kelley tries to magic Tobin out of existence but it doesn't work, she just shakes her head.

"Seriously, it'll only take like two seconds. I'll help you over here onto the fire escape and we'll be done before you know it."

"What is it exactly you need help with?"

Tobin leaves her hand out, brings out the other. Despite her better instincts Kelley steps off the ledge of her window and onto the outer edge of the fire escape, holding the railing with one hand and Tobin's forearm with the other. Instead of letting her try to climb over the railing itself, Tobin grabs Kelley under the arms and lifts her effortlessly onto the fire escape.

Kelley can't stop looking at Tobin's face. She's thinking about the fact that she's decided she's dreaming, trying to think about the things that dreaming entails. Tobin doesn't let go of her, instead she shifts her grip from under Kelley's arms to her forearms, and shifts so that _she's_ the one standing with her back to the rail, and Kelley's on the inside.

"I need you to help me stop something. There's this girl trying to commit suicide and I don't think she should do it. I think I can help her. I think _we_ can help her."

Kelley barely hears it. Instead she looks at Tobin's face, her expectant expression, her wide-set eyes.

"Did you know that you only dream faces that you've seen before?"

Tobin seems to humor her, smiling with her teeth, squeezing Kelley's arms.

"Yeah?"

It reminds her of Press.

"I don't think I've seen your face before," she manages to push out through suddenly chattering teeth, and then she adds, just as her knees start to feel weaker than they should, "I think I'm going crazy."

She crumples in Tobin's arms and cries harder than she's ever cried before. She's getting this stranger's jacket all wet and snotty and she doesn't even care, or maybe she does but she's not in enough control to stop herself. Tobin hugs her like they've known each other for years, and when Kelley can breathe she hears what Tobin's repeating again and again into her ear: "It's okay. We're gonna help you."

-

Kelley learns who 'we' is as soon as Tobin has her standing on the sidewalk. There are two other women there, ones she doesn't remember seeing from the window. They're both much taller than her or Tobin, one of them broad-shouldered but soft-faced. The other immediately hugs her and introduces herself as Jill.

"I'm Barnie," says the third one, the broad-shouldered one, "we're gonna take you to dinner, is that okay?"

It's the most Kelley's interacted with other people in so long that she feels like a leper. Tobin is funny, and not in the way that some people are- she's not funny because she's trying to be, she's just _funny_ \- and Kelley laughs until her ribs ache. They tell her to order whatever she wants, and she eats so much that she feels like she's going to burst. The whole event is warm and bright and happy. Happier than she can remember being since Christen lived in their apartment. In _Kelley's_ apartment.

When it's over, when they pay, she starts to feel the dark of panic close in on her again. She doesn't want to be left alone. She's afraid if they leave her alone back in her apartment she's going to see things again, and if she does she's not sure she can be held accountable for what comes after.

Tobin saves her.

"Hey, so- this is probably a bad time, but when you said you thought you were crazy-"

"I see things."

Kelley interrupts. She does it when she's nervous, but she's always embarrassed when she does it and now is no exception. The other three wait for her to explain herself, and she shakes a little when she does.

"I mean, I- when I get scared, sometimes, it's like there are two or three of me. I can see them, and I can touch them, and when I move sometimes they do. So, I- I think I have some kind of, dissociative schizophrenia or something. But I'm nonviolent. And usually asymptomatic."

"Have you been diagnosed?"

It's Barnie who asks it- Nicole- as she leans forward a little, elbows on the table. There's something kind of doctorly about her. Not physician-like, more...counselor-like. Kelley wants to tell her everything. She's glad the diner is loud when she admits that she's self-diagnosed.

"Have you ever seen them while you were around other people?" 

This time it's Jill that asks, and Kelley squirms a little under the combined attention of her three new acquaintances. She's a studier. She's not used to being _studied_.

"No. I was afraid I would so I kind of...cut myself off. Quit my job and stuff."

"So you don't know whether they're real or not," Tobin says, stirring her straw in her Coke. Kelley, shocked, stares at her for a solid ten seconds before she manages to speak again. When she does, her voice wavers, because she's afraid of the answer but knows she has to hear it.

" _Could_ they be real? I mean, isn't that scientifically impossible?"

Jill smiles, but waits until their server takes the signed receipt before she answers.

"There's a lot of stuff science can't tell you."

-

"We can all do stuff like what you're describing. Like- I mean, Barnie here can summon things. Animals if she wants, or weapons, or whatever. And I can move stuff with my mind."

"Please tell me this isn't a joke."

Barnie steers her into an empty lot with a hand between her shoulder blades.

"We're good people, I promise. We wouldn't joke about it."

"So, what? You're superheroes?"

Tobin grins and straddle-leaps over a trash can, like someone jumping a hurdle.

"Yeah. That's Batman and Batwoman and I'm Robin."

Jill laughs but it's clear she's heard the joke before; Kelley starts to get vaguely worried that they're four women alone in an empty lot in the middle of the night. Even in a group it feels unsafe.

"We don't call ourselves superheroes. Other people do, though."

Something dawns on Kelley and she stops walking, jaw dropping.

"You're _those_ guys? Can you show me?"

She doesn't understand why the other two look right at Tobin when she asks, but she turns to follow their lead. Tobin jogs across the empty lot, far enough away that in the shadows Kelley can barely see her, and doesn't stop until Jill calls for her to.

"Tobin's power is the power to neutralize other powers. Basically, if she's within a certain distance of us, we can't do anything."

Kelley squints and can barely make Tobin out in the dark. She's giving two thumbs up.

Two feet away another trashcan flies forward, and Kelley yelps, her tension exploding when she jumps and turns to face it. The lid of the trash can is just sort of floating two feet above it, but when she turns to face Jill and Barnie they're staring at her openmouthed and the lid clatters down.

"What?"

Kelley panics, turning in a circle, wondering if there's something behind her. In the process she sees the other Kelleys- four of them, more than she's ever seen- and realizes she can see through all of their eyes, too. And they all look kind of confused. From across the lot Tobin cheers.

"That is so _sick!_ "

"You can see them?" 

She calls it over to Tobin, who laughs in reply, and then turns back to Barnie and Jill, unable to stop the grin from spreading over her face. 

"You can see them? You guys can see them?"

"Dude," Jill laughs, "they're kind of hard to miss."

"Welcome to the club," Barnie says, with her teacherly smile, and Kelley smiles back- all five of her.

-

Tobin claims her right away, and Kelley's never felt so wanted. There's another girl in the room Tobin pulls her into, but even at two am she's awake. She's reading one of the crappy tabloid magazines that's always been Kelley's weakness, but she perks up when they enter the room and immediately smiles, even if she's clearly confused.

"Alex, Kelley. Kelley, Alex."

They start to say hello but Tobin's not done- "Kelley duplicates."

Alex laughs. She's pretty. She's probably the prettiest girl Kelley's ever met, actually, in an objective way. There's not a lot of explaining to do, it's just something about the symmetry of her face and the color of her eyes. Kelley's not sure whether or not it feels unfair

"I'm an empath. I can use other peoples' powers, once I learn how to manage them."

"You're like the trump card," Kelley says tentatively, hoping it's a punch line. Her roommates laugh, and she feels the tension drain right out of her. The relief of validation, of proving that she's not insane or schizophrenic, or unfriendable, almost entirely overwhelms her. Exhausted, she sways a little on her feet, and Tobin steadies her with one hand.

"Alex's shift starts soon," Tobin says, "I'm sure she won't mind if you borrow her bed."

-

Christie's the one to take Kelley under her wing.

It takes two weeks until she decides it's safe for Kelley to have a room to herself. There's an extra bed, but Christie promises they're going to fill it eventually. Christie promises a lot of things, and- slowly- they come true. She promises Kelley that she's safe, and Kelley _feels_ safe. She promises Kelley that she's going to learn to be comfortable with her power, and after a month or so that's true, too. Christie's like a cross between a cool mom and Miyagi, with her infinite wisdom and smile just this side of mischievous. There's not a day that goes by where Kelley doesn't feel lucky to be alive, and there's not a day that goes by where Kelley isn't thankful for Tobin scaling that fire escape and saving her life.

Tobin and Alex adopt her seamlessly. After a week and a half it's already like they've been best friends since childhood. Occasionally Alex and Kelley will get into discussions about things like fixed-price tariffs and Tobin will have to lighten the conversation; occasionally Kelley and Tobin will devolve into such stupid punny jokes that even Alex has to take a breather, but at the end of the day it's them that Kelley feels connected to. 

Her first big responsibility is helping Abby with dinner. To Kelley, it's impossible to undersand how Abby could intimidate anyone. She's tall, sure, but she's always talking and smiling and Kelley loves being in the kitchen with her. She explains everything as simply as possible, and Kelley's a fast learner; by the end of the first week she has Abby's routine down and knows where everything is. Abby likes that about her, she can tell, and Abby has the same kind of sense of humor. so Kelley starts to associate the smells of spaghetti sauce and casseroles and soups with the sound of Abby's laugh and a hand tousling her hair like she's a twelve year old little sister.

-

Little by little she starts to take shifts, to integrate into the whole system. 

It's only when Christie entrusts Hope to her that the whole thing feels real.


	5. tobin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> home isn't a where, it's a who.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh man I'm so sorry for this. a) because it took so long and b) because it's...get your tissues.

College only lasts a year for her.

In all honesty, Tobin’s surprised it lasted that long. She hadn’t wanted to go in the first place; her parents had insisted and community college had seemed like a good compromise. It’s not, really, because she hates it, and it’s boring, and she only goes to class a third of the time. Still, somehow, she makes it a whole year before she decides she’s done with it. 

She has two choices, as far as she can tell. She can either make this a problem- tell her parents she’s dropping out, and win or lose the ensuing argument, effectively ruining their image of her as the perfect selfless daughter, or don’t tell anyone anything and disappear for a while. Neither of them are good choices. There’s the third option of suffering through three more years of college, but that’s a waste of her parents’ money, and even though it’s dishonest to disappear- even though it’s a lie of omission- she knows it won’t be for very long, and they’re more likely to take the news better if they’ve been worried about her for a few months. Three at the most.

So she’s not a good person, maybe, but is anyone, really? And Tobin figures she has plenty of time to repent, to make herself good and useful. It’s not her fault society has developed so that everyone thinks you’re not useful unless you’re in a cubicle. She wants to _do_ things for people. Surely that’s a good enough reason to lie to her parents.

God will forgive her.

She leaves at night. At seven she pays the fee to sever her contract with the landlord and by eight she’s packed into her minivan. She figures it’s okay to sleep in her car if she locks it and parks somewhere that’s open 24 hours, or at least that has lights out front. It’s going to be dangerous, but if she covers herself enough in blankets it won’t look like she’s there at all, and she doesn’t have the money to rent a room.

She picks a gas station. She has some money, but she knows she’ll need a job eventually; because she’s not expecting that to be easy she keeps her food purchases to a five dollar maximum. With that she buys a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, a box of Cheez-Its, and three water bottles, and she makes herself a late night meal by spreading the peanut butter with her finger and folding a single piece of bread over.

The bread lasts her four days. She finds that it’s water that’s the most expensive, not food or gas, because she only moves the car once every other day; mostly she walks around looking for places that are hiring, and often she gets distracted by life she didn’t understand when all she did was avoid going to class.

-

Tobin meets people. She’s employed by the end of the second week, flipping burgers at a grungy McDonalds, but she’s still not making enough to live anywhere but out of her van, and what that means is that she meets people. People like her. /Homeless/ people.

Not all of them are homeless for the same reasons. One woman she meets is homeless by choice and claims she has enough money to buy a house if she wants (Tobin wonders if she’s just crazy but can’t think of a good reason not to believe her). Most of them have been through college, but it hasn’t really helped them any, at least not in their present situation. Plenty of them have minimum wage jobs, like she does- but they’re still a strain on society, just because their situations don’t allow them to make the kind of money it takes to maintain anything like a home.

It’s unfair, so Tobin takes it upon herself to change things. 

Not everybody wants her help, of course. Those who do will take help in any form she can give, and, seeing as she really only needs a hundred dollars or less to feed herself a week, a lot of times that means that she buys them lunch or dinner. She knows better than to just shell out money without making sure people do with it what it’s intended for, so she eats her meals with strangers.

They don’t stay strangers for long. Whatever Tobin never took to- statistics, biology, history- talking to people has always been easy for her, and now’s no different. The best part of her day is listening to these people talk, listening to the people of the streets, the things they have to say.

-

Many of them are broken.

After the first month, that’s what Tobin’s the most aware of. Many of these people are broken, battered, bruised, beleaguered, but none of them are beaten. When she starts praying for them, she stops praying for herself; it’s no longer important to her whether or not God forgives her for disappearing the way she has. For all her family knows she’s doing what she’s done before, dropped off the radar for a few months. It doesn’t worry them because she always comes back. What they don’t know is that the more time she spends talking to these people the less she wants to go anywhere near college again. 

She doesn’t think about that, though. She prays. She prays for the woman with three kids living out of station wagon. She prays for the old man whose status of legally blind keeps him from getting and keeping a job. 

She prays for everyone she meets. 

-

“Tobin?”

“Hi, mom.”

“We just got notice that you terminated your housing contract a month ago.”

“Yeah.”

“Where are you?”

“New York.”

“School?”

“Not exactly.”

“If you’re not going to school the what are you _doing_? You- you really should just come home. We’ll talk about it.”

“I’m helping people, mom. There’s nothing to talk about.”

-

Some nights when it storms Tobin gets scared.

It doesn’t happen often, really, considering she lives alone and the most constant people in her life are the other grocery store clerks she works with now, but she get crushingly lonely when she’s lying across her own backseat listening to the elements outside. It sounds like the world is trying to tear her apart. One particular night is so bad- the storm is- that Tobin thinks she can feel the van shaking, and she rolls onto one side and piles blankets on top of her until she can’t see and can’t hardly breathe and imagines there’s someone there with her. 

She wants that. It hits her like a ton of bricks but that doesn’t make it any less true. She wants someone to hold her and tell her everything’s going to be okay. She wants to tell someone about the things she sees on a daily basis, about the struggles people face that she feels like she’s facing with them. It’s like she’s missing her mother, except that she never had that kind of relationship with her mother. It’s more like missing her sisters. It’s enough just to know that it’s _missing_. Enough to make her cry.

The crying makes her panic. It’s a trait she’s had since she was little, that the loss of control that comes with crying the way she’s crying now triggers some kind of fight or flight response, and she throws the blankets off of her and tumbles out into the parking lot gasping for air. The rain comes down so hard that it almost hurts, but at least she can’t tell that she’s crying anymore. She grabs the side of her car for support, leaning into the wind, and doubles over trying to force air into her lungs.

She’s not alone.

Really, honestly, because the moment she looks up she sees someone lying on the sidewalk maybe three yards from where she’s parked, in the parking lot of the ShopRite where she works. Not somebody, _a_ body, because whoever it is doesn’t move.

“Hello?”

Tobin’s voice sounds far away and faint even to her, even after she tries again- “Hello?”- but the body stirs, and Tobin, taking a hesitant step forward, sees that the body belongs to a woman in her sixties, sopping wet with a face screwed up in pain.

“Did you fall?”

A nod.

“Can you get up?”

A pause, then the woman shakes her head, and Tobin crouches next to her. The woman’s trying to tell her something, but Tobin has to lean in close to really hear it over the rain and the thunder.

“My back,” is all she catches before she comes to a decision and pats between the woman’s shoulder blades.

“I’m going to call an ambulance, I promise I’ll be right back.”

“No- don’t.”

The injured woman grabs Tobin by the wrist, and her hand is cold and wet and gritty from the pavement. Tobin freezes, conflicted and confused, until her silent question gets answered: “I can’t afford the bills.”

-

They’re up the rest of the night. Tobin buys the woman- Rosemary- something to eat, and lets her sit in the running car while she alone tramps into a twenty-four hour laundromat to dry Rosemary’s jacket. It doesn’t occur to her even for a moment that she could come back outside and be stranded. Either she’s naive to the extreme or has a knack for knowing when people aren’t going to take advantage of her.

It doesn’t matter in the end, because Rosemary is still there when Tobin climbs back into the van, eyes wet with grateful tears.

“You didn’t have to help me.”

Tobin laughs a little bit, fiddling with the air conditioning.

“I wasn’t gonna leave you on the sidewalk.”

“Anyone else would have.”

“I don’t believe that.”

Rosemary shifts in her seat as Tobin idles the van along towards the ShopRite lot, letting its wipers work at a squeaky highest level. Tobin doesn’t remember the last time she had someone actually in the van, and it’s making her conscious of the way she lives- what a mess it is.

“Do you live out of this?”

It’s as if she’s a mind-reader. Tobin shrugs, suddenly shy- now, of all times in the last two hours- and avoids answering.

“I have an apartment. Stay with me- just the night, for taking care of me.”

-

The way they talk develops into a sort of pattern. Instead of asking each other questions, one of them will offer something, start a conversation, and trust that the other will offer a similar amount of information. It’s like playing pickup sticks, because there’s a kind of strategy to it that Tobin’s not sure she understand but is clearly grasping on some subconscious level- some sort of fragile understanding she doesn’t understand enough to lose.

Rosemary is sixty-three, unmarried, childless. She says she’s never been married, but the way she says it suggests that she would have liked to be, at some point. Tobin wonders if it has something to do with the childlessness, but of course she doesn’t ask. The other things she learns are a little more useful- that Rosemary slipped a disk back near Christmas of last year, and her nephews paid to have her have the surgery to fix it, but it didn’t do the entire trick because she couldn’t afford the physical therapy. Tobin worries that the fall in the rain might have made the disk an issue again, but she doesn’t say that, either.

Instead she tells Rosemary that she’s nineteen-but-almost-twenty, that she just finished her first and last year of college studying nothing in particular, and that she works at the ShopRite where her van was parked, five days a week, eight hours a day. Rosemary’s the first to ask a question, but it’s superficial- don’t her feet get sore from standing so long?- and Tobin says yes of course they do, but she saved up some money to buy good sneakers and she doesn’t mind it so much anymore. At any rate, she figures it’s better than sitting behind a computer in a gray cubicle for hours on end.

“Why do you figure that?”

Tobin shrugs, but she’s not feeling judged, particularly. It’s an innocent question, so her guard isn’t up when she answers.

“Because all day I talk to people and meet people. Part of my job is- you know, customer service stuff. Asking people how their day is. Sometimes they even answer.”

“You’re a good person,” Rosemary says, smiling distantly, focused on the hands she’s clasped in her lap, “that’s very rare.”

-

Tobin lives with Rosemary for three weeks before it happens again.

This time it’s the stairs in front of the apartment- a misstep- that sprawls Rosemary out on her back just as Tobin’s rounding the corner to come back. The garbage is with her, spilled out over the curb now, the only feasible reason for Rosemary to be out this late anyway, but Tobin ignores it and rushes right to those stairs. Halfway there she stops dead, mirroring the people on the other side of the stairs who appear to be running toward _her_.

There are two of them. They’re girls, probably her age, one taller than her and one shorter, who have hoods up and scarves around their faces like they don’t want to be recognized, like Rosemary might have something on her worth stealing, and Tobin lunges for them just in time to hear the taller one shout, “We’re here to help!”

“I can handle it,” is all Tobin bothers to say before she goes back to Rosemary, who’s trying and failing to sit up. They don’t go away, but she can’t care yet. She’s too worried.

“I’m fine,” Rosemary insists, but she’s still not sitting up, just clasping Tobin’s hand and squeezing it hard.

“Fine like ‘alive and breathing’ fine, or fine like you can get up and go inside fine?”

“The first one.”

“That’s not good enough.”

The taller girl leans over Tobin and asks her to step back.

“I told you I could handle it,” Tobin half-snarls, half surprised by her violence and half surprised by the lack of reaction she gets in response.

“I know you can. And you could easily do it without my help, but please let me help you anyway.”

Tobin glances back down, and when Rosemary nods at her she takes a begrudging shuffle back so that the hooded stranger can take her place. It’s not cold enough for the scarf or the hood on either girl, and Tobin’s still suspicious enough that when the strange girl reaches under Rosemary’s body to get at her back- when Rosemary winces- it takes all her willpower and the glance of the shorter stranger to keep her rooted in place.

After barely a moment Rosemary’s entire expression changes, slackens, and Tobin lurches forward again but this time she doesn’t stop and the other girls get out of her way.

“I’m fine,” Rosemary says again, this time sitting up, and Tobin can’t speak through her own haze of surprise and disbelief. “I mean it- I’m fine now, I- it’s as if nothing happened at all.”

Tobin turns on the strangers, who look as if they might disappear at any moment.

“How’d you do that?”

“She did it,” the shorter girl answers, “That’s really all that matters, isn’t it?”

They’re gone by the time Rosemary is standing on her own two feet again.

-

“Do you believe in miracles?”

Rosemary frowns at the scallions she’s chopping; Tobin tosses the tennis ball against the tile and catches the rebound, waiting for her answer.

“That sounds a lot like you asking me if I believe in God.”

“Do you?”

She doesn’t answer at first. Tobin shifts in her seat at the rickety dining table and turns to watch Rosemary work, work at the salad and at her question. She used to chew tobacco; it’s obvious because of the way her mouth continues the habit even years after she’s stopped with the drug itself. It’s one of Tobin’s favorite things about Rosemary, the mystery of the tobacco- what kind of woman grows up in the forties and fifties chewing dip?

It doesn’t distract from her question, though, and her expectancy is what pushes the conversation on.

“You do.”

It’s not a question, but Tobin nods to answer it anyway.

“Well, honestly, I don’t know. It’s not that I _don’t_ believe, either, it’s just that I don’t know, I’ve never been convinced in either direction. I’ve always been envious of people who had a really concrete sense of faith. Who were really convinced, you know- of God.”

“So then what do you consider your back, if you don’t consider it a miracle?”

Rosemary drops the knife and wipes her hands off before she goes to Tobin, standing in front of her and grabbing her hands- like a grandmother, not like a housemate- before she answers so earnestly that Tobin’s heart breaks: “I want to believe it was a miracle. I just find it hard to believe that I’d deserve another one.”

“Another?”

“After you.”

-

Because her life is so simple, because working as a cashier can’t possibly take up all the brainpower she can use in a day, Tobin finds herself obsessed.

It’s not a low-level obsession, it’s all-consuming and if she thinks about it too long it’s almost enough to scare her. Instead of letting it scare her she lets it take over and spends her hours off and the hours where Rosemary is asleep to look for the people who saved them. _Them_ \- because Tobin knows better than to think she’d be anything without Rosemary, without her love and her kindness. She wants to find a way to repay them, or at least to thank them, especially when she keeps replaying it in her mind and realizes how unnecessarily protective she was.

She considers for a few days that they might have been some kind of modern-era God-sent guardian angels, but for some reason she can’t quite put her finger on it doesn’t seem true. It’s not as if she’s expecting wings or a beam of light straight from Heaven, but they just seemed incredibly ordinary to her, and that’s why she’s so intrigued in the first place, so thirsty to know who they are and why they were there and how they did what they did. And _why_.

Nothing comes of it, though, except that she gets good at slinking through the shadows, and she finds a whole new slew of people to feed. Rosemary doesn’t ask her where her money goes; Tobin’s not sure she realizes that so much of it goes away.

-

Tobin turns twenty and starts to forget a little bit.

She still looks for them, but now she goes out at night for other reasons, and maybe she doesn’t sleep as much as she ought to but she gets a managerial position at the ShopRite that lets her have fewer hours in order to make the same amount of money, which means if she needs to she can sleep during the afternoon after her shift, so that’s what she does. 

Things come to a head almost a year after It happened, which she knows, in the back of her mind. She’s taking the long way back home, somewhere around three in the morning, when an arm comes at her from behind and bars across her stomach just as another hand claps over her mouth.

He’s taller than her, but only barely, and she can smell the alcohol on his breath when she bends her free arm- the one that’s not tearing at his hand- and jabs him with her elbow. He’s not expecting it, probably because he’s only had her a few seconds, but he doesn’t let go, he just sort of twists enough for her to bite his hand. When she wriggles free he backhands her, and she stumbles into the wall of the building next to her expecting to die any second. He has to have a gun, or a knife, or something.

It turns out that he has both. 

“I don’t have any money,” she blurts, holding the side of her face that he hit- it’s bleeding, because he has a ring on, which means he’s married which seems like an odd detail to notice but baffles her anyway.

“I don’t want money.”

The moment she realizes what he wants is the moment she loses control completely.

He has a gun and at any second he could easily kill her with it- or with his knife- and it doesn’t matter to her enough to keep her from doing something stupid. She grabs the hand with the gun, and he shoots but she’s already pointed it up so it doesn’t hit anything but now he’s coming at her with the knife _and_ the gun and she kicks him in the shin and prays, selfishly, not to die.

There’s a rush of cold air and just like that everything stops. Tobin cowers against the wall, shielding her face and realizing belatedly that she’s crying. When she peels her eyes open it’s because somebody is touching her. 

There are hands on her face, and when she opens her eyes there’s a girl talking to her in a soft quiet voice and a woman standing behind her with eyes like ice.

“I know you,” the girl says, just as Tobin starts to realize her cheek doesn’t hurt anymore. Turning back to the woman behind her, she says it again- “I know her.”

-

“It’s best if you just forget about tonight.”

They won’t tell her their names, but they insist on walking her home.

“I’m not going to. I didn’t forget about what happened before,” Tobin directs this at the girl who remembers her, “that’s why I go out at night. To find you.”

“That’s stupid.”

Tobin bristles.

“Why? I wanted to thank you for what you did. And I was curious. I still _am_ curious. I don’t think that’s stupid at all.”

“It’s not,” the girl’s companion says- the one who froze Tobin’s attacker to ice- “it’s what you’re doing that’s stupid, not how you feel. You would have died tonight.”

Tobin stops dead a few blocks from the apartment and crosses her arms, tired and irritated and above everything else more confused than she’s ever been.

“Okay, fine, then tell me who you are and I won’t have to go looking.” 

It’s petulant and she regrets it immediately. This is not who she is, not how she acts, and she doesn’t want them to think of her as headstrong or reckless, because she would never describe herself that way. There’s something about them that unsettles her. More accurately, there’s something about the way she feels around them that unsettles her: jealous. Like they have something she wants, and yet she doesn’t know what to call what they have other than superpowers, and she’s never dared to imagine herself a heroine.

“Forget about us,” the woman with icy hands says, gripping her shoulders, “if you trust us at all, trust me when I tell you it’s for the better.”

-

On Tobin’s twenty-first, Rosemary doesn’t ask why she doesn’t have friends to go out with- or at least coworkers- and Tobin has never loved her more for anything.

She has friends, of course, but all of them are older than her, and most of them are homeless, and her coworkers don’t see her enough to even know it’s her birthday. Well, her boss knows, of course, because it’s in her employee profile, but even her pat on the back had seemed kind of forced. 

Tobin doesn’t like being reminded that she’s not normal.

Most people her age would be celebrating with a group of friends. Most _girls_ her age would probably have a boyfriend by now, or a girlfriend or at least something, but all Tobin’s ever had was her senior prom date who kissed her by the punch bowl and the French exchange student in her first year of college who introduced her to the idea of kissing girls and then did _more_ with her. It’s not a normal rack-up of experiences. Nothing about her is _normal_.

Rosemary splurges on champagne but they drink it out of regular glasses. Tobin only has a glass, but Rosemary has two, and then covers the bottle and puts it away, even though they know it won’t keep. 

Not everything does. That’s something Tobin’s learning.

-

In September, Rosemary loses twenty pounds.

It happens overnight. At least that’s how it feels to Tobin, who comes home from work one day and sees Rosemary sweeping and feels it hit her over the head as if it’s been obvious, as if she’s been _missing_ it. Rosemary is thin and shrinking by the day, stooping more, but not from her back. From somewhere else.

She doesn’t have to say that she’s sick. Tobin notices it in the way her hands shake; she grabs them and holds them and wills the strength back into them with all of her heart.

Of course it doesn’t work. The praying doesn’t really work, either, so Tobin quits her jobs and quits feeding homeless strangers and stays in the apartment. She doesn’t know if it’s cancer or something else, but she does know better than to suggest that Rosemary go to a hospital, because neither of them can afford it and Tobin’s not sure she could afford to know the answer even if she could afford the bills to find it out.

In January it gets too bad for both of them. In January Rosemary gets tired of Tobin having to walk her to and from the bathroom, sends Tobin out for groceries, and calls the hospital herself.

They put her in intensive care right away. The strangest thing about it is that Tobin could swear, knowing Rosemary for as long as she has, that she’d be the type to want to die at home and not in a sterile brushed-chrome-and-white-tile atmosphere. Whatever it is it means money, although not too much, so Tobin gets a job again, this time delivering pizza, and mostly lives out of her van, which she keeps parked as close to the hospital as she can. Once a week she cleans the apartment, in case Rosemary comes home, so that it looks lived-in, but it’s more for her own benefit. She knows nobody’s going to come back to it. She certainly won’t.

-

“I’m leaving it to you. The apartment.”

“Please don’t.”

“It’s already done.”

Tobin grabs the hand closest to her where it rests on the hospital bedsheets and squeezes it, fighting back a wave of nausea and the prickle of tears.

“Change it. I don’t- I don’t want it.”

“You can’t live out of your van again. If I leave this world making sure of one thing I’m going to leave knowing you’ll have somewhere to sleep at night that’s at least a _little_ bit difficult to break into.”

“I’ll join a convent. I’ll join the military.”

“I’m leaving you my money, too, whatever that’s worth anymore.”

“Don’t leave me anything. Don’t leave at all.”

Tobin’s voice cracks at the end of the sentence and the tears come even though she’s determined that they won’t. She drops her head to the bed and cries into the sheets so that Rosemary won’t see, keeping a grip on the hand she’s been holding but not a grip on the sanity she’s been so carefully protecting for the last six months.

“You know I’m not in control of that, Tobin. If I was I wouldn’t be here. I don’t want to leave anything, especially not you, but I’m going to, and it’s going to happen soon, and I just want to make sure that you’re safe. That you have a home.”

“/You/ are my home, not the apartment!” Tobin’s half-wailing into the sheets now, regretting every word out of her mouth but unable to keep them from coming, throwing a tantrum like she’s two instead of old enough to drive and drink and vote.

“I’m trying to do things for you that nobody thought to do for me when I was your age. Let me.”

-

Rosemary is DNR, of course.

She dies on a Tuesday. It seems so arbitrary- Tuesday, April 29th, 2:43 am. A month before Tobin’s birthday. She’s there, because Rosemary convinced the nurses she needed to be, because by some animal instinct or act of God she knew what was coming and no longer wanted to be alone. In the moment Tobin panics, almost tells the nurses to get a defibrillator, to keep Rosemary alive long enough for them to get her nephews in town, but she’s able to keep her wits about her long enough to remember the request and to realize that she’s all the family Rosemary wanted or needed to be around.

She makes it to the vending machines in the next wing before she cries. It’s the wing where babies are born- ironically placed, probably- and there are expectant fathers and uncles and grandmothers and sisters and brothers al waiting in chairs for someone to be born, waiting for the little chime that tells them someone’s been born. That’s where she sinks against the wall and holds her head in her hands and cries. A kid who was coming to buy some crackers skirts around her and goes into one of the bathrooms instead. She gets a lot of looks of pity but not a word of sympathy.

She has her van parked around the back alley of the hospital because that’s the only place she can put it without someone telling her to move, and when something moves in the shadows a few yards away she’s convinced she’s going to die like she almost did before and almost- _almost_ \- welcomes the idea.

She’s not _that_ far gone yet.

She scrambles in her backseat for the kitchen knife she carries with her and leans against the door of her van, watching the shadows move.

“You should go home.”

It’s a woman’s voice, one that’s eerily recognizable and makes her shudder.

“I don’t have one,” Tobin lies, only it doesn’t feel like a lie.

The woman steps from the shadows and Tobin almost passes out. She’d know those eyes pretty much anywhere; now she’s just thankful she’s not frozen into a block of ice. 

“You had one the last time I saw you.”

“Yeah,” Tobin grips the knife a little tighter, feeling the shaking start in her fingers and work its way up her arm, “but I don’t now.”

They stare at each other for almost half a minute before the woman sighs, rolls her eyes, and talks to someone Tobin hadn’t even noticed was watching: “Go back to HQ and tell them I’m bringing someone else back with me.”

“I’m not gonna go ‘til she drops the knife,” the other woman says. Or girl, really, since she can’t be much older than Tobin. She’s one Tobin hasn’t seen before; for a moment she wishes the healing girl were there and then she remembers that her hurt isn’t on the outside this time.

Tobin drops the knife.

Then something incredibly strange happens- strange even for the situation. The girl Tobin doesn’t recognize goes as if to run and then sort of stumbles and falls, like she’s tripped over something only there doesn’t seem to be anything to trip on. 

“Are you okay?”

“I can’t run.”

“Did you twist something?”

“No, I can’t- it’s- try freezing something.”

Tobin watches the taller woman stick out her hands. She also watches absolutely nothing happen, and sinks back into the seat of her van when she starts to feel like this is her fault.

About a minute passes, where neither of the strangers speak and one pulls the other back up and dusts off her shoulders. _Maybe they’re aliens_ , is the first thing Tobin can come up with, and she’s so exhausted and hysterical from crying and from fear that she actually almost laughs at the thought that they might be telepathically communicating like Vulcans.

When they turn to face her whatever feeling she had that might have made her laugh dies in her chest and she wishes she had the knife again.

“A year ago you wanted to know who we were. I think maybe it’s about time we told you.”

-

Shannon is the woman Tobin gets assigned to right away, the one who’s saved her life on multiple occasions now. She says she prefers Boxxy, which Tobin assumes is some kind of last name or nickname, but Tobin calls her Shannon until she hears the others use what she was afraid might be something too casual.

For the first two hours she sits in an abandoned hotel and listens to a whole room of women talk about her. They acknowledge her sometimes, but the things they’re talking about don’t make much sense to her and it seems as if they know that. Something about nullifying powers, a bunch of other stuff she’s too tired to catch. Every once in a while Heather- the girl who’d wiped out by the hospital- leans over and tries to translate something. By the end of it, all Tobin knows is that something she did made it so that these people couldn’t do whatever they normally do- ice people or heal people- and she feels guilty about it without really understanding it.

Shannon shows her to an empty room somewhere around seven in the morning.

“Lauren- the girl who was with me the last time you saw me, the one who healed your face- she’s in the next room over if you need anything.”

“Can I leave?”

Tobin sits on the edge of the bed when she asks. It feels a little like she’s gotten herself into some kind of a gang, but it also feels like jail, and it also feels _right_ , and her head is swimming while she waits for her answer.

“I thought you didn’t have anywhere to go- I just wanted to make sure you did. This can be home if you want it to be.”

It’s familiar. Tobin has to take a few seconds to realize why, and when she does she cries.

Boxxy gets down on her knees in front of the bed and hugs her like they’ve known each other for years. Tobin thinks that in a way they have, kind of, so she trusts her instincts and clings to the only person left to give her any kind of comfort.

“I can’t stay if it means none of you can use your- your superhero powers,” she realizes into Boxxy’s shoulder, but her reply comes with a squeeze. 

“Whatever you’re doing for us is a good thing.”

-

Living in a hotel of superwomen isn’t the part that’s hard to adjust to.

The part that’s hard for Tobin is learning to identify _with_ them. Abby tells her that she’s just as much a superhero as the rest of them, and Christie tells her they’re not actually superheroes anyway, but to Tobin they are, and to Tobin her power seems like it just sort of defeats the purpose. She likes Lauren and Amy, though, mostly because she forgets about their powers a lot, and because they take her to church with them and joke around with her and make her feel like a person again. She’s never had friends her age, or at least she hasn’t since high school, and it’s nice. It’s more than nice. It’s _home_.

-

Alex fills a spot Tobin hadn’t realized was empty.

Once Alex is around- filling the extra bed, filling the extra space- Tobin feels useful for the first time since the last time she shelled out cash to someone who needed a hot meal. Her power starts to feel like it means something the first time Alex lets her in, and Tobin gets addicted to it, to feeling like she really matters to someone, so it’s hardly a surprise to her when she realizes it’s a little more than that. Alex is her best friend, but Alex is also a Pretty Girl, and for the first time in her life since her freshman year of college Tobin has time to notice Pretty Girls. It’s kind of a problem that one sleeps a few feet away.

She gets lucky that Kelley arrives when she does, because Kelley’s a good distraction and an even better substitute for ‘best-friend-Tobin-doesn’t-want-to-kiss’. Kelley lightens up everything a lot, even though she spends the first month on Tobin and Alex’s floor because the whole group is afraid she’s going to try to jump out of a window again. Her sense of humor is just weird enough to actually be _funny_ almost all the time, and she brings out something bright and happy in Alex that Tobin feels blessed just to get to experience secondhand.

-

ROSEMARY ANNABELLE POLK

JUN 2, 1945 - APR 29, 2010

LOVING AUNT AND SISTER

-


	6. lauren

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ashes to ashes, we all fall down.

“I need you to sit in the back. With the pumpkins and the mailbox, so they don’t fall out, okay?”

“Isn’t that illegal?”

“Only a little.”

Her father winks at her and she rolls her eyes a little but clambers into the back of the pickup anyway. They’re strange to have one, even out in Staten. Pickups are southern things, sort of a relic of where he’s from, like his cowlick and his faint accent. To Lauren he’s always seemed like a cowboy in the suburbs, just a little quaint, and even now at thirteen when she’s supposed to be annoyed at everything out of his mouth she likes him better than her mom.

She’s always been a daddy’s girl.

-

He lets her hammer in the mailbox on her own. Puts a towel over the top of the post, so she won’t dent it too bad, and holds it in place while she whales on it until the stake is driven far enough in. The next door neighbor’s son- two years older than her- had run over their other one, but Lauren likes the new one better. It’s white instead of green, and it’s different than everyone else’s.

The box next door, Luke, comes over to apologize that afternoon.

“I’m not good at backing up yet,” he says, by way of explanation, and Lauren’s father invites him in as if he can’t see the blush creeping into her cheeks.

-

Her mother decides that at thirteen she needs The Talk. Not just the talk about sex, which Lauren is fairly confident she understands _better_ than Rita does, but the talk about puberty, which Lauren’s already started. She’s had hair in weird places for two years and has exhausted the public library to an extent that would make any grown woman blush.

Still she pretends to be surprised by the level of detail her mother goes into, regarding boys and what they want. In a way she _is_ surprised that it’s being made to sound like boys are _evil_. She doesn’t think Luke is evil. She rolls her eyes a few times, and each time her mother pauses, itching to reprimand, but ends up just continuing her tirade.

When she’s done detailing the reasons why abstinence is important she suggests that Lauren invite Luke over to carve pumpkins.

-

Years later she’ll remember that evening as the happiest of her childhood. 

Whether or not that was the case doesn’t matter; it was at least pleasant, even with the sticky innards of pumpkins all the way up her forearms and her parents like hawks through the kitchen windows. Luke’s pumpkin was rough but clearly enough a jack-o-lantern; Lauren gave hers a bow, and he stayed until the seeds were roasted and out of the oven, spread out on cookie sheets and ready to eat.

She wished Luke would kiss her. She said goodbye to her parents and went upstairs and went to bed and it was one of the few nights where she forgot to pray first, forgot to ask God to protect her family, to protect her, to forgive her the day-to-day sins she’d committed, like thinking about Luke the way her mother wouldn’t want her to, or rolling her eyes when her parents asked her to set the table.

-

She wakes up choking.

Lauren rolls out of her bed, terrified, and instead of getting up she lies on the floor and breathes smoke for two solid seconds before she crawls to the door. Belatedly she remembers the things they’ve taught her in school and touches the door with the back of her hand. It’s hot enough that she yelps, and yelping means she draws in all the smoke again and hacks as she pushes away from the door, scrambling backwards.

She wants to scream but she’s afraid to because she’s afraid of the smoke, because her mouth is dry and burning and her throat feels like it’s bleeding already. She doesn’t want to stand up, either, because smoke rises, but she doesn’t know what else to do, and she wants her dad, and she doesn’t understand why he hasn’t already come up for her, or found a way in.

The window.

He could come through the window.

She stands long enough to open it, and the air pushes past her with such force that she’s thrown against the ledge of the window, all the wind knocked out of her, and the door to her room explodes in with the force of the hot air and fire trying its way out. She’s unwittingly let in oxygen it needs to survive. Oxygen _she_ needs to survive.

But the fire’s at her back, licking at her bed, her dresser, the carpet, and she’s so hot she feels as though she’s already died, and she leans out the window and screams for her parents but they’re not there and the only thing she can think to do is get out.

So she jumps.

She hears her ankles snap when she hits the ground. It’s better than her back, she thinks, even as she cries out and falls to her side and almost blacks out with the pain. It’s better than being dead, she reminds herself, craning her neck and trying through her tears to see the house, obscured by smoke. 

The fire’s coming across the lawn. 

“I don’t want to die,” she says, and her voice comes from far away, from the back of a pickup truck, from wherever her tears are coming from deep inside. “I don’t want to die, please, I don’t want to die.”

She crawls into the bushes on her hands and knees and collapses again, sobbing and clutching at her purpled, swollen ankles, her fear of dying overshadowing than her fear of the pain.

Just as she felt them snap she feels the bones knit together. It should hurt, because she can _feel_ it, and she shouldn’t be able to, but she can, and the swelling disappears, and her head swims but they don’t hurt anymore. Nothing hurts anymore but her lungs.

They keep hurting until she stops running somewhere in the middle of Tappen Park.

-

She doesn’t sleep. Instead she spends the remaining hours of the night in a suspended dream state, trying to decide if it’s real, if her house is gone and her ankles healed. If _she_ were ever real at all. She has to touch herself often to remind herself that she’s still there, and takes to wringing her hands. 

Lauren’s afraid of what God has done.

It had to be Him. In a distant sense she had always believed that He was at work behind everything that happened, to and around her, but she had always believed it the way you believe anything that you’ve been told repeatedly but never experienced, like the atom bomb or segregation. This is real to her now, God’s hand, and it had been His decision to take her home away. Somehow she knows right away that her parents are gone forever; it's as if two threads anchoring her to the real world have been abruptly severed. She can feel the lack of them and knows they aren't with her. What she doesn't understand is why.

If she were chosen to live there had to be a reason. And of course there are plenty of adults who spent their entire lives trying to understand the reasons why they're alive, but Lauren can’t help feeling as if her case is more extreme, considering God has apparently chosen to take her family away in a fire worthy of its own private Armageddon title.

When the sun starts to come up, she feels the hunger start, raw and clawing in her stomach. It doesn’t heal like her ankles did, but when she notices the burn on the back of her forearm and presses the opposite palm to it, that _does_ heal. She watches, transfixed, as the skin under her palm crawls and comes back together, all traces of injury gone, even the ache and itch. When she finds herself thinking about her parents and whether an ambulance came for them, she realizes the obviousness of her task and almost trips over her own feet as she sprints out of the park on ankles that shouldn’t function.

-

She’s had the fortune to never be admitted to a hospital, only discharged, as an infant. She’s also smart enough to find her way around and sneaky enough to know she can’t get caught.

The kids’ wing is silent and the stairwells that lead to it are empty. THere are nurses on duty, of course, but all it takes is about ten minutes of crouching in the broom closet to figure out who’s where and how to avoid them. One is walking up and down the hall, but the wing is L shaped, and Lauren is confident that if she times it right she can be in the first room without getting noticed. To be sure of it, she takes off her sneakers and hides them under the stairs. Stockinged feet- as years of Christmas spying have taught her- are always a safe bet.

She just wants to help.

The first room there’s a kid with a broken neck. He has one if the collar casts, his entire body immobilized like in cartoons, and Lauren wakes him up with her index finger to his lips. 

"Don't shout," she says, when she sees the panic flicker over his face. He's eleven, maybe twelve, and wiry and dark. "Don't shout, I'm gonna help."

"Help what?"

She touches his neck, above where the cast starts, and his face contorts as he tries to twist away. He can't, of course, though his lower body spasms in its restraints. After a moment he falls still, and his expression goes from suspicion to slack jawed surprise. 

"I can feel it," he tells her, his voice soft with awe, "what are you doing? What did you do?"

“I helped,” she says, but she’s just as surprised. There hadn’t been any guarantee that it would work on someone else; now that it has she knows she’s going to work her way down the hall until she’s done, exhausted, or caught.

-

She gets exhausted first. Without having eaten anything, she runs out of fuel before visiting hours even start, and by the time they do she’s rappelling down the backside of the hospital, clawing down the fire escape, too weak and tired to care if she gets caught or not. By some miracle she makes it to the ground.

Then she thinks maybe she’s been caught after all.

There’s a woman watching her. Lauren can’t tell how old she is. She has a young face, but something about her seems older, old enough to be someone’s parent or teacher even though there’s not a wrinkle to her skin. She’s watching from the bay where the unused ambulances are parked- or at least nobody’s using them at the moment- but isn’t dressed in a uniform or anything that would suggest she’s not just a normal woman, in jeans and a heather v-neck.

But she’s not a normal woman. Lauren knows it.

She hesitates, unsure whether or not running will help her, or whether she should even be afraid. The woman raises a hand, like she’s going to wave, and a clatter startles both of them into scattering, until Lauren is pressed close between two dumpsters with hardly any view of the parking lot, her knees aching.

She can hear her heartbeat in her ears and is moments from curling in on herself and giving up, but she forces herself to move until she can see more of the lot, so she can look for the stranger. When she finds her there’s someone with her, a man in an EMT uniform, holding her hands in his.

-

“Hello?”

Lauren startles, realizing suddenly that she’d fallen into some sort of stupor. When she tries to sit up, blackness overwhelms her and she sinks back down onto her forearms. The voice is unfamiliar, but when she cranes her neck to look up she sees the woman who almost-waved at her, and blinks. Her mouth is too dry to make words. She doesn’t try.

“How’d you get in?”

With no answer, the woman tries again, but gently.

“What were you doing? Visiting someone?”

Lauren shakes her head slowly, painfully, the lack of food and water and sleep and the amount of smoke she inhaled hours before finally overwhelming her. The woman crouches and Lauren can’t do much more than flinch.

“Are you okay?”

Another head shake. It hurts, getting helped to her feet, but Lauren manages it, blinking away more black spots in her vision and leaning against her helper’s shoulder. She has to wet her lips three times before she can speak.

“I’m Lauren.”

-

By the time she’s sitting and eating, Lauren knows three things: she’s lucky to be alive, she’s lucky she wasn’t caught, and the person solely responsible for both things is a woman named Christie.

Christie’s apartment is small, the kind where the bed’s in the same room as the kitchen and the couch. There’s no TV, just a bookshelf, a refrigerator, an oven, a microwave, and a rickety card table with two chairs. Everything is clean, and well-decorated, and Christie makes her mac and cheese out of the box the way her parents never let her have it.

She drinks three glasses of water before her head stops hurting, and although her throat still hurts she’s more than willing to talk. For every question Christie has, _she_ has plenty of her own. She figures answers are what she owes for the food and water.

“What were you doing sneaking out of the hospital?”

“Well,” Lauren taps her fingers against her empty glass, “really I was sneaking in, not out. I was just helping.”

“Helping?”

She’s afraid to talk about it. Somehow she’s not afraid that Christie won’t believe her. It doesn’t even seem like a remote possibility; what she’s afraid of isn’t being disbelieved, it’s having to face the consequences of whatever she’s done- whatever’s been done to her. She’s scared.

“I can heal people. Like Jesus at Capernaum.”

“Like-?”

Lauren breathes through her nose, fighting the panic threatening at the constriction of her throat.

“When he healed the paralyzed man, when he made him walk.”

“You can do that?”

She’s not sure how to answer. She knows she healed her own ankles, her own burns, but being in the hospital feels like a dream, and she’s afraid to say she can and have it not be true. She thinks of the boy in the neck brace and his awed, wide-open eyes.

“Yeah.”

-

Christie demonstrates first on a spoon, balanced between two empty cups; when she touches it there’s nothing where the spoon was and a thin line of ash on the table above where it rested. She doesn’t explain it and Lauren’s not sure what she’s seen, so the next thing is one of the cups, which is very suddenly just a pile of ash.

“I can’t do another one,” Christie says, apologetically, “I need the cups.”

“You can do that to anything?”

“Yes. At least I think so. I try not to do it unless I have to.”

Lauren reaches out and drags a finger through the ash, and it sticks to her finger from the condensation of her own cup. She pinches her index finger and thumb together and rubs them until the ash falls again.

“Could you do that to a person?”

Christie blinks. She grabs a broom from next to the refrigerator and pulls the trash can over so she can sweep the dust away, and it’s obvious she’s not going to answer, so Lauren drops it. She isn’t sure she wants to know the answer, and she’s not entirely sure why she asked, except that it was the first thing she thought of, a body falling to ash, no flame or explosion.

“We can do things we shouldn’t be able to do. So what do we do now?”

Lauren can tell there’s a real answer, and even though she’s afraid to answer wrong she thinks of the hospital and gives it her best shot.

“Help people. Cause God’s given us the ability to.”

“I don’t know if it was God,” Christie admits, touching the lip of the table thoughtfully, “I don’t know why we’re like this. But I don’t think it was an accident.”

For almost three minutes they don’t speak any further. Christie moves the trash can back, and puts the broom away, and digs another blanket out from under her bed that she sets up on the couch with one of her two pillows. Lauren puts the cup that’s still intact in the sink. 

Christie walks to her, without pausing or wavering, across the tile and wood, and touches her face. Lauren doesn’t crumble to dust, but she closes her eyes and imagines it.

“If you promise to be safe I promise I’ll help you.”

-

 

The EMT’s name is Chris.

Christie insists there’s nothing romantic between them, but Lauren remembers the way he held her hands the first day she saw them. She tells Christie she thinks it’s cute that their names match, and Chris takes them out in the ambulance to lunch one day, even though it’s technically against the rules. 

He’s that kind of man.

He knows about Christie’s ability and Christie lets Lauren tell about her own. He calls them powers, like the two of them are superheroes, and Christie chides him for it, a smile on the tug of her lips. When he’s on shift, they’re on shift, hiding behind the hospital between dumpsters until he pulls around and hides them in the ambulance. He takes them anywhere he thinks they can help. From car crashes to senior homes, he sneaks them in and half the time the ambulance is unnecessary, because Lauren’s touch is enough. Sometimes it isn’t, and Chris takes the victim, and Christie and Lauren find their way back to the hospital however they can.

Chris doesn’t take them to fires.

-

“I feel like I’m stealing your thunder.”

Chris nudges Lauren’s knee with his beer bottle. His dark hair curls at his forehead, like Clark Kent. He’s handsome, but he reminds her of her father.

“How could you steal my thunder? I’ve got the uniform.”

“Cause lots of times you don’t need to bring anyone back to the hospital. And it’s your job to fix them, not mine.”

Christie can very obviously hear them from the stove, but she ignores them, focusing on the task- the _pasta_ \- at hand. 

“My job’s to help people. I’m helping you, and you’re helping other people, so I’m doing my job. See? Even if I have to sneak you guys around.”

“Illegally,” Christie finally jumps in, watching herself stir. She’s not smiling until Chris gets up and kisses her shoulder over her shirt, slipping an arm around her. 

“Just a little.”

He’s given up Christie’s charade of trying to hide what they have. He shows more physical affection than she does, but sometimes Lauren catches Christie leaning into him, like now, or catches their goodnight kiss. Christie’s smiling now, and if the pasta’s slightly overcooked from all her stirring and Chris distracting her, none of them mind.

-

“Why does he sneak us around?”

From her bed Christie sighs so heavily that Lauren hears it on the couch. 

“You’re old enough to get it, we’re different. We might get- I don’t know. Taken into police custody for interfering. Or tested on because of what we can do.”

Lauren thinks about it for a few minutes. The lamp is still on, so she knows Christie’s not asleep yet. She traces the woodgrain lines within her eyesight until she comes up with a way to phrase her question, and then she pulls her blanket up to her chin and rolls onto her back, fixing her gaze on the ceiling and the blinking smoke detector.

“Why do you have so little faith in people?”

The amount of time Christie waits before answering just makes the answer sting more.

“Maybe you’re not old enough to get it.”

-

Lauren keeps a tally.

At twenty here’s a collapsed building, during a construction accident, that requires the fire truck, which means that they have no chance of being really, truly hidden. Christie almost looks as if she doesn’t want them to go in, but when she sees the state of the crew, most of them trapped, she doesn’t hesitate, and Lauren follows.

The firemen notice them just in time for Christie to disintegrate an entire wall.

The ensuing explosion really is not her fault, or anyone’s fault. Later they’ll learn that the gas was leaking all along, that the building was barely safe to begin with, that the firemen were called for more than just rescue. At the time there’s no way for them to know anything but the heat throwing them back, Lauren clawing at Christie’s arm to keep them anchored together, so that when they fall they fall entangled, temporarily deaf to the shouts for help, the shouts of pain.

But they see it. And they _smell_ it.

Christie doesn’t look for Chris. Lauren is so terrified, so traumatized by the gas flames, that it’s not until they escape three blocks away, temporarily hidden behind a gas station as more sirens scream past them, that she can cry.

Through her tears she reaches for Christie’s arm and smooths the angry marks of burns and scrapes away. The lines left by her fingers go, too, and Christie stops her with a hand on her collarbone that makes Lauren jump. When she remembers that she’s safe she crumples in Christie’s arms and cries the way her instinct to help hadn’t let her.

She had seen her parents in the fire. It wasn’t even the same kind of fire. It was a blue-tinged fire in the seconds she had even had her eyes on it, but she had seen them, and realizes only then that she hadn’t let them go yet.

-

Christie turns out to be right about it all.

Lauren’s dozing when Christie comes back into the apartment, and from the moment the door slams- _slams_ \- shut, she knows something is wrong. Christie doesn’t go to her; she digs two duffels out from under her bed and tosses one at the couch before she tears open the dresser and starts throwing things in. A wad of money, earned babysitting; clothes, underwear, socks.

“We’re leaving?”

“We have to. Please don’t ask me to explain right now.”

Lauren knows when to keep her mouth shut.

It’s her that remembers the toothbrushes and toothpaste, and it’s her that takes a blanket with them when they go, tucked under her arm with the duffel swinging over her other shoulder. Christie’s walking fast enough that she might as well be jogging, and the sidewalks are slick with cold rain. They trek to Marsh, and once they get there Lauren sees why they were rushing. The 12:30 am bus is just pulling in, mostly empty.

When Lauren drapes the blanket over them Christie looks at it like a foreign object, uncomprehending, until a laugh works its way out of her throat, bubbling into tears at the corners of her eyes. She buries her face in her hands and Lauren hugs her as the bus jolts them towards the river, towards the city.

-

Christie rents a hotel room that night. Lauren doesn’t ask where the money comes from, because it’s paid in cash and she’s worried that there isn’t much left. When Christie showers, she checks the safe, and finds that they’re much better off than she’s been led to believe, which relieves her about as much as it scares her.

It’s only once they’ve both showered that Christie starts to explain herself, slowly and deliberately, brushing through her hair with one foot tucked up underneath her.

“He turned us in.”

“Who?”

“Chris. He turned us over to the police. Names, addresses, everything. It’s why we had to leave. They were coming for us.”

Lauren can’t wrap her head around it. She keeps remembering the little curl at Chris’ forehead, the press of his beer bottle against her knee. Christie isn’t crying, but in a way it’s almost worse, the way she keeps her face so rigidly dispassionate. She’s either tired or trying to convince herself she doesn’t hurt, Lauren decides, and leaves her to it.

“Why would he do that? It doesn’t make sense, he-”

“He thought he was helping,” Christie interrupts, and even though she doesn’t look up Lauren can see her eyes flash and notices the tension in her jaw and neck, “he didn’t listen to me, he didn’t understand why I didn’t trust the police to want to help us. He couldn’t understand why I was so sure we’d be arrested.”

“Like me,” Lauren says, the realization hitting her like a ton of bricks.

Christie kneels in front of her and shakes her knees slightly, emotion finally breaking out onto her face.

“No. No, not like you. You’re not like him, Lauren. Do you understand me? You’re good. You’re _good_ , and we’re going to do good things, here now. With different names. We’re going to help people. You and me.”

Christie’s damp and warm when Lauren throws her arms around her neck, and she smells clean and new, like hotel shampoo and city water. It’s less of a hug and more holding each other together. They stay like that, Christie’s nose pressing into Lauren’s shoulder, until she believes it.

-

It’s harder without someone to sneak them. Christie comes up with all kinds of ways to get them into situations that they can help, but it boils down to being quiet- something Lauren is just learning how to do, really- and being inconspicuous, until you aren’t. There are close calls, but Christie is also insistent that both of them learn proper self-defense, and they spend a bulk of the time they’re _not_ spending out in the field keeping themselves physically fit. Lauren grows hard and lean with muscle, and there comes a day late in the winter, near Christmas, that she hardly recognizes herself.

It’s not a bad thing entirely. It helps with Christie’s insistence that they’re starting a new life- that she’ll enroll in public school at the start of the next school year, under a different name- but she has to look hard in the mirror to see any of her parents in her anymore. She’s impressed with the person looking back at her, more adult than child, but it doesn’t stop her from being afraid of the change.

They’re shopping for Christmas when a gunman sweeps through Macy’s. He’s not really threatening to shoot anyone, just taking money, but Christie splits them up anyway to make them harder to catch. It’s unspoken that they’ll stop him; the police are already taking too long. Lauren kicks in his knee from behind, and he regains his balance with a shout to turn and point his gun at her (the onlooking customers are murmuring and shouting and running away now, which they’ll be thankful for later, when they have to disappear for a few days). Christie’s already on his other side, yanking the gun from his hand just as it crumbles to dust in hers.

They’re still expecting to have to fight him when he lurches, trying to decide which of them to hit first, but then there’s a crackle and a rush of cold air and he’s lurching because his feet are trapped in ice.

Lauren steps back, just out of his reach, assuming this is something new that Christie’s developed the ability to do, but then Christie’s looking at _her_ , and the gunman’s not looking at either of them.

The third woman’s only with them for a half a second, just long enough for them to get a glimpse of dark hair tied tightly back and bright blue eyes, before she’s running.

Lauren doesn’t have to be told it’s what they should be doing, too.

They aren’t the only people running, of course, because the panic’s still going in waves, so they’re as inconspicuous as they can hope to be, racing across the street and into the welcoming swath of pedestrian traffic. The police pass them on the way in, and Lauren’s looking back at them when she sees the ice woman crossing to the next corner down.

“We gotta go after her-” and Christie doesn’t argue.

-

She’s hard to chase. She clearly knows they’re following her, because she doesn’t stop moving, dodging and weaving in and out of traffic, staying just ahead of them, trying to lose them but smart enough not to try to lose them somewhere where there are less people, like a side street or alley. After a few minutes of that, Christie veers closer to the street and Lauren stays where she is, interpreting the flick of a wrist as a signal to split them up but keeping the stranger in her view. 

She catches what looks like a double take and wonders whether this woman thinks they’ve split up or not, whether she gets it. As soon as the thought occurs to her it’s a moot point- Christie veers into view again, and the two press in, towards the buildings.

Lauren follows.

-

Her name’s Shannon. She’s twenty four, an assistant teacher at a high school across the city. Christie takes to her right away, once the introductions are out of the way, and Lauren feels an intense rush of relief once she’s reminded that she’s not alone. There _are_ others like her. They’re bonded together by more than just their womanhood, the three of them hunched at a table in a crowded Starbucks. They have an understanding of each other that can only come from discovering something within yourself that nobody had ever prepared you to discover.

No one ever _could_. That’s the gist of it, really, Shannon speaking clearly and quietly over her coffee, speaking to both of them like equal peers even though there’s more than a decade between them. Lauren decides she’s going to like Shannon, too. It seems important that her decision is separate from Christie’s. She doesn’t want to be an add-on.

“Are you guys family?”

Christie tilts her head a little at the question, deferring to Lauren as if she knows her own answer, as if Lauren’s opinion is the one that really matters. Her heart skips for a moment before she thinks about the shared blanket on the midnight bus ride, and Christie’s arms around her waist, and a kitchen that’s somewhere empty now, no pasta, no Chris.

“Yeah.”

-

Christie buys her a necklace for Christmas.

It’s understated, fake silver (or at least she thinks it’s fake) in the shape of a cursive ‘L’ so that the loop is where the chain goes through. It makes her feel especially girly when she puts it on. 

She loves it.

-

(She gets Christie a ‘World’s #1 Mom’ mug as a joke, and Christie laughs about it, but she drinks her breakfast tea out of that mug every day for the rest of as long as Lauren pays attention).

-

In February Christie finds the hotel. She never explains how it happened, and at this point in her life, although Lauren jokes that they have some kind of beneficiary, some old, dead aunt that’s left her creaky house to them, she knows better than to ask seriously. If Christie is going to tell her, she’s not going to do it because Lauren _asked_.

She doesn’t tell, though, and there’s enough to do that it doesn’t matter. They have to clean almost the entire interior, which takes them months; in April Shannon moves in, all her belongings in a suitcase and a duffel bag, and the work goes faster for it. Lauren’s favorite job is knocking down the wall between the hotel’s kitchen and dining room. She grips the hammer in both hands and swings it like a bat, sending plaster and drywall and wood snapping and tumbling before Christie takes pity on her and turns the whole thing to another pile of dust.

“You should play softball,” Shannon laughs, when Lauren pouts, her fun taken away.

-

They get a TV at an estate sale in May, after all the other furniture has been moved around or brought in or given away. Shannon makes them crowd onto the little couch with her to watch whatever movie the movie channels are playing, every night after they’re done. Christie usually falls asleep twenty minutes in, her head resting back against the top of the couch, or sometimes against Shannon’s shoulder. Lauren likes the corner, so that Shannon sits between them. If Lauren’s feet get cold she just pushes them unter Shannon’s legs. They take turns being the one to wake up Christie at the end of the night, and for the first time ever, Lauren’s thankful to have her own room, her own bed.

-

Lauren enrolls at Shannon’s high school in August, under the name Lucy Ranney, and she doesn’t ask where the paperwork came from to get her there because she’s afraid to sound ungrateful. It’s strange to feel like a normal kid again, for the first two hours, which is as long as it takes before she realizes that she doesn’t fit in here at all.

It’s not as if people are _mean_ to her. Certainly, within the first week, it’s very clear nobody has picked her out to bully. She’s taller than most of the boys in her grade still, and the older boys, the taller boys, have other things to worry about like sports and smoking and pretty girls. It’s just that whenever she sits down with anyone they go silent, and even after two weeks of it she hasn’t made a single friend.

Christie tells her she should join a club, and on her own Lauren picks the FCA, because they have donuts on Friday mornings and welcome walk-ins, and because she misses church.

Everyone ignores her except for one girl.

Her name’s Heather. She introduces herself as HAO, though, like ‘heyo’, and pries out of Lauren her plans to try out for the soccer team (despite Shannon’s teasing she doesn’t have the hand-eye coordination for softball) and who her homeroom teacher is.

“Oh man, you have Fletcher? He’s a cool guy. I mean, he’s okay. He spits when he lectures though, so if you have a class with him definitely sit like three rows back and not on an aisle.”

“You’ve had him?”

Heather- HAO- grins and shakes her head, handing Lauren a donut.

“Nope. He coaches the basketball team.”

It makes sense that Heather plays more than one sport. She has a lot of energy, energy that manifests itself in foot tapping for most of the meeting. She also doesn’t disappear after the first time they talk; throughout the day they bump into each other in the halls or at lunch and each time HAO’s kind and friendly.

When Lauren gets back that night, long before Shannon’s even free to go, Christie’s repainting the windowpanes in the kitchen. She stops, turning to say hello, and Lauren stands in the doorway, overcome with exhaustion and emptiness.

“I think I made a friend today,” she says, and then she cries.

-

Her birthday falls on the day of a soccer game, which they win, and- because it’s her birthday- she even gets to play off the bench. She doesn’t start the game, but she gets to play up top with Heather for the last fifteen minutes, and they run all the way to the hotel light on their feet. Christie and Shannon have trusted Lauren enough to know whether or not HAO’s dangerous, whether or not she’s going to have questions, but mostly she seems excited about Lauren living in a huge abandoned hotel with who she clearly assumes are Lauren’s two moms. 

“Make a wish,” Christie says, sticking the fourteenth candle into her cake and starting to light them painstakingly slowly. Shannon rushes her playfully, insisting the wax is going to melt onto the icing, and HAO bounces in her chair a little, starting the birthday song the moment the final candle is lit.

None of the three women are good singers. They’re all on different keys, smiling too hard to actually _sing_ anything, and Lauren counts each candle, knowing before they’re halfway through what her wish is going to be.

-

She wishes for the safety of the family around her.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> rejection is a funny thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: mention of self-harm ideation.

Christie brings Becky in alone, which has become rare lately, and that’s what tips Amy off that something is different. She’s the only one in the living space when Becky arrives; the others are either on shift or training or napping, so she’s unofficially Becky’s first friend. 

The first time Amy sees her she doesn’t know what to think. 

Becky is taller than her by a few inches, and kind of typically pretty- blonde, smooth-skinned, blue-eyed, and lean- in a way that’s unsettling just because she owns it so much. As far as Amy’s seen, women who look like that carry themselves one of two ways: either awkward and concave and pigeon-toed, like they can’t fill out their own skin; or salacious and forward like their skin won’t contain them.

Becky’s neither. She’s whole. She’s more solid and real and self-realized than almost anyone that Amy can think of, and that immediately scares the living crap out of her.

-

Christie knows that Amy has to be suspicious, or at least curious, but she has her reasons for this special delivery and though she knows she won’t say them out loud except maybe to Shannon, she also knows that it won’t take long for Amy, of all people, to catch on. Amy’s an observer. If she hasn’t already caught drift of it, it won’t take her long.

Partially, her reason for bringing Becky in alone instead of waiting to find someone else and bring in a pair is due to how busy the rest of the group is. Shannon has Tobin; Abby has Lauren; Heather has Amy, and not a single one of them has a power like anything any of the vets have dealt with before. Partially, though, there’s something she sees in Becky that she wants to be sure that she personally fosters- a potential for leadership, and not in the way that Abby or Shannon would lead. If she’s lucky and her hunch is right, Becky will turn out to be a kindred spirit. And, ultimately, that’s what Christie’s looking for- someone as recklesslessly selfless as Abby, as tough-as-nails as Shannon, and as cool and collected as she is, herself.

Becky turns out to be more than she bargained for.

-

“Tell me again how your power works?”

Becky doesn’t appear to have a nervous habit, and that’s what throws Christie for a loop the most. She just stands and makes level, unwavering eye contact, feet hip-width apart, hands at her sides; a position that’s inherently vulnerable but commands attention all the same. Either she’s not unsettled by the idea of a troupe of freelance superhero women (unlikely) or she’s a robot and therefore has no nervous habits at all (more likely).

“I don’t know too much about it because it’s pretty invasive, so I try not to use it.”

“Invasive. Like, physically invasive?”

Shaking her head, “Not really. It’s like mind control, I guess,” Becky answers. “I don’t want to demonstrate because it’s- it messes with people. Basically I can get into their heads and make them say or do things.”

Nothing surprises Christie anymore, but she needs a moment or two to think about that. It’s useful, for sure, but it’s also a liability; if the others don’t feel like Becky is someone they can trust then they’re going to isolate her because they’ll be afraid of what she can do. That’s the opposite of what she wants. From the corner, Amy speaks up, quietly fixing the problem that hasn’t even arisen yet: “Demonstrate on me.”

She’s terrified. Terrified so badly that she’s about two seconds away from running as far as possible. The thing is, though, there has to be a reason that Christie brought this woman in early, and if she can help she’ll be damned if she doesn’t try. 

The two blondes turn to look at her in unison, and they’re mirroring each other’s body language without noticing it, palms to their sides and shoulders squared. Amy notices. She also notices the relief on Christie’s face when Becky shrugs in agreement.

“If you’re alright with it. I promise I won’t make you do anything embarrassing.”

“I’m fine with it.”

And it happens just like that. There’s a pulsing at the back of her head, like a bad headache but without the pain. It’s just pressure, like something’s wriggling its way into her consciousness, and then suddenly it feels as if she’s looking through a pane of glass, and feeling through a haze of very heavy painkillers. Becky’s watching her and Amy swears her eyes are bluer than they were a moment earlier, but she can’t really focus her eyes too well, so she looks straight ahead.

Her hand lifts from her side, palm down, without her giving it permission too. 

“Weird, right?”

It’s her voice, but she doesn’t say it.

Becky drops her and Amy sags a little, hands on her knees for a moment as she tries to reorient herself. Cap makes a move to come to her aid, but Amy waves her off, straightening and taking a deep breath. 

“Whoa.”

“Yeah.”

Christie looks like she isn’t sure whether she should be more concerned or curious, and so she’s a bit of both. When Amy locks eyes with her and affirms that she’s alright, the curiosity takes over and Cap turns back to Becky.

“Can you read minds, too? I mean, when you’re in there- do you see what she sees or feel what she feels or anything, or can you just physically control her?”

Amy’s wondering about that, too, now- hoping that Becky can't read minds, because mostly what she’s been thinking is how intimidated she is and how pretty Becky is, on and off in little spurts like she’s not sure which of the two will win out yet. Then Becky does something with her face- some sort of little half-frown; a subtle pursing of her lips and a raise of one eyebrow, and Amy knows exactly which one is going to win out after all.

“Not really. I mean, I can’t read thoughts or anything. That’s not how the brain really works; it’s not a clear sequence of commands and thoughts and feelings. I get vague impressions of feeling, like- anger, or sadness, or fear. Those kinds of things. And I can sort of see what other people are seeing, but it’s like I can see what I’m seeing, too. Kind of like I’m seeing what they’re seeing, but in my head.”

Right about there, Amy decides she needs to be careful.

-

The last time she can remember being careless enough to make a big mistake had been the day that Abby found her. 

They had crossed wires. ANd, actually, Amy had crossed wires with Christie before without really meaning to. It’s just that when you make a living out of helping people, you tend to run into other people whose lives revolve around helping people, which is simultaneously nervewracking and comforting. 

A bomb threat had been making a lot of people late for work while the police waited for the guy threatening to blow the bus station up to disarm himself and rationalize with them. They had it under control, more or less, but they were going to have to wait it out either way. That was fine until the police figured out that one of the women waiting for the bus had gone into labor, induced by the adrenaline of having her life threatened, oddly enough, and the waiting and rationalizing became much, much more urgent.

Amy couldn’t deliver a baby, but she could take the guy out. It was an unorthodox way of solving the problem, but then, she was also going to be in the body of a silverback gorilla, so she wasn’t exactly too concerned with societal norms. She was more concerned about stepping on the police’s toes- she didn’t want to make herself an enemy- but at the end of her five-second period of decision-making, the fate of that baby and his mother was plenty more important than her reputation.

That five seconds was enough time for Abby to bust in through a window and get the guy in a headlock. He still had his hand on the remote for the split second before Amy joined them and grabbed it out of his hand. She thought about crushing it but was afraid to set anything off, so she ended up having to cradle it extremely carefully in the palm of a huge, leathery hand while the police flooded the area, and Abby stood there and stared at her.

She had no way of knowing yet that the headlock Abby had the culprit in was a very careful and gentle thing. She had no way of knowing that distracting Abby would make her squeeze him a little too tight. His windpipe was probably bruised by the time the police got close enough for them to split, if his coughing and coloring was any indication, which is why Abby chased her, which is why Amy panicked and got herself into a corner in an alley four blocks away and shifted back to avoid ending up at the zoo.

“What the _fuck_?”

Abby had been spewing more expletives than that when there had been a gorilla involved. Amy tried to look unfazed.

“Can I go?”

“What are you?”

“A really unfortunate good Samaritan. Can I go or do I have to turn into something significantly bigger than you and disrupt the entire neighborhood?”

Abby had lit up and laughed and taken Amy home. 

Somehow she thinks Becky’s situation had been a little different.

-

“You need help if you’re going to bake a cake for everyone. That’s at least three cakes.”

Amy jumps at least a foot off the ground when Becky appears next to her, knocking the recipe clear off the counter. The way her heart skips a few beats, though, she isn’t sure she can completely attribute to being startled. She’d like to, mostly because Becky definitely strikes her as straight, but she’s been very aware of her attraction to Becky from day one and she’d like to think she’s gotten pretty good at handling it.

When given fair warning.

“I was just going to make a cake for Abby,” she murmurs, reaching for the recipe, and Becky hums in the back of her throat. “Well, we have enough eggs and flour for three, probably, so even if Abby manages a whole cake by herself it can at least kind of be a traditional birthday party.”

“I’m not coordinated enough for three cakes at once,” Amy admits.

“Good thing I am.”

-

And she is. She’s like a cake demon, mixing and pouring and scraping and directing Amy like she’s done this a lot in the past. That’s what gives Amy the idea for her question, which she waits until the first cake is in the oven to ask: “What’d you do, before Christie roped you into our circus act?”

Becky smiles, pushing her sleeves up past her shoulders and reaching to start mixing the second bowl. Amy’s adding eggs to the third, but she still catches the nostalgia in Becky’s voice when she answers: “I ran out of money. Like, for a living. BA in English, then a masters in Education, all in six years total, and just so I could work odd teaching jobs and slowly realize I was running out of time and income.”

It fits, somehow. Becky speaks as if someone’s writing the words she’s about to say, so a BA in English makes sense, and there’s something commanding about the way she holds herself that would make her a good teacher. There’s hardly a moment of air between them before Becky turns the question on its head: “What about you?”

“Guess,” Amy says, because she knows Becky won’t be able to. There’s another bit of silence filled by the sounds of eggs cracking and Becky mixing, the wooden spoon clicking a muted rhythm against the stainless steel, before the guess is out there: “Painter.”

Amy laughs. She actually has to put the measuring cup down on the counter and really _laugh_ , shaking her head. 

“I don’t have a creative bone in my body. I...majored in sociology, but ended up with a job in psychology.”

“Like, school counselor stuff?”

“Kind of. But for convicted criminals.”

They’ve had moments, lately, where Amy’s not sure if she’d being flirted with or not. This is one of those moments. Becky looks her up and down and makes a noise in the back of her throat like she’s impressed, then leans over to grab the oven mitt from Amy’s other side, pressing against her in the process. Totally unnecessary, but not blatant enough that Amy can call it flirting and know what to do about it, even when Becky holds her gaze for a moment longer than she needs to after the fact.

Amy wonders if ‘criminal psychologist’ fits into Becky’s vision of her; wonders what it was about her that made her seem like an artist. Maybe because she doesn’t speak much. She moves to mixing, and they continue in silence, until the second pan is in the oven and Amy’s pouring the third batch of batter into the final pan. Becky takes it and slides it into the oven, too, but in the process Amy smudges the first three fingers in her right hand all over the inside of the mixing bowl and chocolate batter gets all over them.

She holds them up- just for half a second, to survey the damage- and just like that Becky grabs her by the wrist. It’s gentle, but Amy doesn’t have time to pull back before there’s the flat of Becky’s tongue and the pads of her fingers and the batter is gone.

It’s the most overtly sexual thing anyone has ever done to her and she thinks she might pass out.

-

Becky had never placed a lot of stock in accidents and fate. Granted, being absorbed by a group of rogue superheroines had shaken up a lot of her core values, but the one that sticks in her head the most is the importance of an accident.

It had been her accident, really. Carli had been minding her own business, approaching a corner, and Becky had whipped around that corner on her bike, for no reason other than that she thought she could make it. She had laid them both out on the curb and they had been lucky to be in an area where there wasn’t enough traffic- on foot or wheel- to make the situation worse. 

She unclipped her helmet and reached for Carli before the bike. When her fingers wrapped around Carli’s forearm, she could see the recognition in Carli’s eyes, and for half a second she wondered if they’d met before. 

Carli said her name.

She’d always had this notion that she couldn’t- statistically- be the only person alive with the ability she had, or an ability like hers. The mathematician in her knew. The author in her- and the author in her was by far dominant- preferred to think she was an anomaly. It was a better story that way. She was constantly battling between wanting the comfort of company and wanting to live the better story until that moment, when Carli said her name, and Becky needed almost no explanation, because she’d been waiting, in a way, since Brad’s fifteenth bitrhday.

-

The next time Becky corners Amy it’s on the roof.

She routinely goes up there to think, especially when it’s too hot and too loud for her to think down in the house. What she’s thinking about, though, is hot and loud all on it’s own. Last night she had been too busy and in too much shock to really register what had happened between her and Becky in the kitchen, but now all she can think about is Becky’s tongue and her fingers.

It seems dirtier than it actually is, and that, ultimately, is what has her...bothered. It’s the idea. 

“Hi.”

She jumps again, noting that Becky seems to have not only the ability to sneak up on her but also the habit of appearing at the worst possible moments. Amy’s not often off-kilter, but Becky makes her that way. Now especially. 

“How’d you get up here?” Becky settles down too close, knees drawn up to her chest, sleeves once again crudely pushed up to her shoulder, and absently Amy wonders why she doesn’t just wear tank tops. 

“I climbed.”

Amy nods. There doesn’t seem to be a point to having a conversation, so she just looks out over the yard, expecting Becky to do the same. The thing is, Becky never does what Amy expects her to do. Now least of all. No, it’s _Amy_ that holds Becky’s attention, like she’s looking for something intently, sifting through Amy’s body language like an open trunk. She feels studied. She hopes she’s passing the test.

“Did I freak you out last night?”

 

Predictably, Amy jerks back a little and looks right over. Now that she has Amy’s attention, Becky shifts a little so that her hips are facing Amy’s way- not entirely, just...enough. 

“No.”

Amy’s lying, though, or at least Becky hopes she is. The point had been to stop the subtle flirting, the back and forth, because it’s clear that’s not getting the point across. This has done the trick; even as Amy answers her eyes drop to Becky’s lips and she moves a fraction closer. She stops before she’s even begun, lifting her eyes to Becky’s as if she’s waiting for permission. 

“You’re not making me do this, are you?”

Becky laughs.

“You’d know. But something I do have to tell you is that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.”

Amy leans back, sitting on her hands. Any of the courage she’d had a moment earlier is gone now, but Becky doesn’t seem offended, or even slightly flushed. It’s as if nothing had been about to happen at all, which is mostly strange because they’re _talking_ about it. It’s just that, Amy supposes, Becky doesn’t feel apologetic about it. Any of it. Amy figures she has enough confusion and embarrassment within her to make up for the both of them.

“What do you mean?”

“I could potentially kiss you and feel absolutely nothing about it. I’ve never kissed a woman before. Or actually, I’ve never even _considered_ kissing a woman before.”

Again, unapologetic.

“Why now? Why me?”

“I don’t know. You’re different?” Becky says it like she’s testing it out, kind of nods at herself when it seems like she’s satisfied with the word. “Most women always sort of seem like they’re hiding something; there’s something sort of inherently unattractive to me about people who aren’t straightforward.”

“Men are straightforward,” Amy agrees, but she’s not sure what she’s saying.

“Yeah, that’s what I mean.”

“So,” Amy deliberates, her courage back, but redirected- if she were honest she’d admit she’s a little bit miffed- “do you like me because I remind you of a man or because you like me?”

“You’re misunderstanding me. I’m not pretending this isn’t problematic. I’m trying to be honest with you so that you don’t go into anything with me and then get blindsided by how…”

“Straight you are.”

“I guess.”

Amy thinks about it. Becky pushes her sleeves up again.

“You don’t think I’m manly.”

“Not at all.”

The rollercoaster of the seasons is tipping just over the edge of summer, its nose poking into fall, and every once in a while Amy swears she can smell it on the breeze. The ability to shapeshift into animals has messed with her, is what she figures. Dogs can smell _everything_. Dogs also don’t have to worry about things like ambiguous sexuality or moral responsibility.

“What do you want?”

Becky presses her palms against her elbows, like she’s cold. Amy thinks about saying that if she let her sleeves sit right she might be a little warmer, but she gets distracted by the goosebumps that rise on Becky’s arms.

“To see what it’s like to kiss a woman.”

“Did you just sort of assume I wanted to kiss you?”

“Ah,” Becky laughs, “there’s the rub. I’ve been in your head, remember.”

“So you _can_ read thoughts while you’re in there.”

“No, I didn’t lie. I just know what attraction feels like.”

It feels about the same when Becky kisses her. A little stronger, a little like getting a whiff of perfume she’s only been getting on the periphery, if the perfume were attraction. Everything is just _more_ for a few seconds, for as long as it takes. Becky’s not messing around. 

It’s very clear that what Amy felt wasn’t really there on the other end. It’s not as if she expected anything different, but it still hurts a little when Becky sighs, shrugs, and says “Nope,” like it’s that easy. And the worst part is that it might _be_ that easy for her.

-

They don’t talk about it again. For a while Becky exists on Amy’s periphery, always sort of present, because they do live in the same building, but non-threatening until the lights are out and the memory comes back. Amy likes to think that the reason she’s so stuck on Becky is because she has nobody else to get stuck on. That’s her excuse, anyway, the same way that her job is her excuse for not doing anything about it. She’s not sure whether she’s supposed to go back after it or stand up for herself.

She doesn’t really have enough dignity to be offended.

-

Becky apologizes anyway, right after Ali and Ashlyn arrive, months later, like it’s only just occurred to her.

“I’m sorry I messed with your head,” she says, over her cup of coffee, and Amy actually checks to make sure nobody else is around before she says, “It’s okay,” even though it isn’t.

“I was in a bad place. That doesn’t excuse it, I know.”

“Did- did kissing me make it better?”

The question is stupid and makes Amy feel juvenile and small. She focuses on getting the jam into every crease in her English muffin so that she ends up almost completely missing Becky’s sad little smile.

“For a little bit.”

-

She doesn’t know the half of it, of course, because Becky won’t tell her. Becky won’t tell anyone. Her story’s not tragic like Kelley’s is, but it’s hard enough that she finds herself wishing, sometimes, embarrassingly, that she were in Megan’s position, so that she wouldn’t have to remember it at all. The last three years have just been a series of private and not-so-private embarrassments. More accurately, over the past three years, Becky has discovered her immense ability to embarrass herself and disappoint everyone in her life.

It had made leaving easier, at least. That doesn’t mean that she doesn’t lie awake at night remembering the times she insisted to her worried parents that this novel would be the one that would take off. It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t still have the sheaf of rejection letters under her mattress. It’s not really self-harm, what she does, not in the way that someone might draw a razor over their skin, or floss until they bleed, but it’s still bad for her that she feels as if she deserves the one night a week that she puts aside to read through them again.

There are seventy of them. Three years, _seventy_ rejection letters, because she was nothing if not insistent that her work was good enough for publishing, and they were nothing if not prompt to tell her otherwise, sometimes nicely, sometimes not. The harsh ones are the best ones. The harsh ones are like a rush of scarlet, and for a half a second before her embarrassment and disappointment sets in again, the sheer experience of being humiliated is almost orgasmic.

Kissing Amy had been part of that. She had wanted so badly, in a new place, confronting a new life, to be someone else, because she was sure that being her would just mean continuing to fail, insist she wasn’t failing, and ultimately disappoint everyone. It’s not entirely clear even later why Amy had seemed like a good opportunity. All that’s clear, afterwards, is that Amy is sweet and earnest and too good for all the bullshit Becky’s put her through.

So the pattern continues, and Becky keeps track of the number of times she makes a selfish mistake, but at least she tries to stop being so righteous about it. At least this time she’s under no delusion that she’s anything _but_ a below-average person and decision maker.

-

The day Amy realizes that Becky’s confidence is a facade it whacks her so hard upside the head that she almost has to lie down.

When Christie tells them that Ashlyn’s going to have to turn herself in, Becky actually physically collapses in on herself like someone’s popped a hole in her. She rests her head in her hands and goes incredibly, terrifyingly silent. Christie doesn’t get it, or doesn’t seem to get it. All she says is that she’s sorry, that she wishes it weren’t the case.

“Don’t blame yourself,” Amy says, once they’re alone, and Becky makes an indiscernible noise of quiet pain.

“I should have been paying more attention. I should have been able to help her somehow- I should s”Htill be able to help her.”

“There’s nothing you can do; it’s not your fault.”

“It’s _all_ my fault. I’m useless.”

“You are not.”

It comes out stronger than she expects it to, but she’s glad. Becky looks up, shocked, and Amy says it again, but softer. It doesn’t seem to really register for a second. When it does, Becky smiles.

She seems fine, then. Reinflates and goes on her way. But the thing is, Amy _knows_ now, Amy’s seen the insecurity, and maybe that makes the kiss okay, or maybe it makes it worse, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter either way, because she knows.

-

Amy knows that she’s good at reading people. She had been good at her job. 

Some days she misses it. There hadn’t been any really good reason to quit, other than the fact that she hadn’t really been making much of a difference, or at least not one that she could tell. The criminals she spoke to either proved to be hopelessly psychopathic or unrepentant, or seemed to make progress, went back out into the world, and fucked up again. Every once in a while one would go out and she wouldn’t hear about them again, but she’s a pessimist by nature, and in her head that usually meant they got stabbed, or shot, or at least had become smart enough not to get caught dealing coke or touching small children.

She was good at it, though. Her bosses and her professors had always told her that it was impossible to measure her worth by whether or not the helped the people she spoke to. It wasn’t at all like being a normal social worker, because a normal social worker got to see results like agoraphobics getting jobs or depressed clients starting families. The measure of her worth was understanding her clients enough to report about them comprehensively, so that the thought processes of criminals on the whole were better understood. It was an amorphous, abstract goal, and it wore on her.

She likes being able to make a difference. She likes the immediate relief of carrying someone from a burning building or knocking the gun out of a man’s hands. She likes being able to be in something else’s skin, because- though she’d never admit this out loud- she doesn’t just become the animals, she _understands_ them.

-

“Have you ever tried possessing an animal?”

It starts out as a goofy, useless question, something to pass the time while they wait for Christie to come to them for the second time in as many days. Lately it seems like the only people in Amy’s life are Christie, Becky, and their pair of confusing, secretive  
. Becky has an answer, which Amy doesn’t expect but is glad for.

“I possessed an animal before I possessed a person. It was totally by accident. My brother had this pet snake when we were younger. I guess he was probably fifteen, which could make me twelve. All the snake was thinking about was eating a mouse whole. That’s it, that was its entire brain, its entire everything was- focusing on, you know, unhinging it’s jaw, and. It was gross.”

“Kind of nice how simple their lives are though.”

“Kind of _terrifying_.”

Becky’s the kind of person, then, who values thinking over everything else, which makes a lot of sense. She’s like Ali like that; suddenly the pairings make sense. Not that Amy thinks she has that much in common with Ashlyn, just that they have similar values. They care about people, about feelings, and their counterparts care about learning and knowing. A snake doesn’t know anything, but a snake also doesn’t _care_ that it doesn’t know anything. Something as simple as a whole living mouse is enough to get it through days without bothering with anything else but its body temperature.

That doesn’t bother Amy. Every once in a while she’s tempted to stay in an animal’s form for a few hours just to get _away_ from having to think about everything all the time. 

“Have you ever shapeshifted into another person?”

Amy recedes like a turtle. The change isn’t as physical as it is sort of clear just from her expression, but her shoulders do come up a little, and Becky almost feels bad for asking, except that she really is trying not to think about Ashlyn, and Amy started the conversation anyway.

“Yeah.”

“Can you- when you’re shapeshifting, how does it work? Do you become something that’s already walking around somewhere?”

“It’s built off of memories, I think. Like, I have to have a clear image in my head of what I’m shifting into. It helps to have touched the animal but I don’t have to, I just have to have seen one in real life to do it properly. I go to the zoo a lot. Or, I did.”

“So you could shapeshift into me. If you wanted to.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Who was it?”

It’s so clear Amy had a traumatic experience with it. It’s either clear or Becky wishes it onto her, wishes for the good story that she knows could be behind it. She’s not a sadist, but she’s a writer, and a good story is a good story, even if it happens to someone she cares about. Someone she loves, even, in her own way.

“A client. I,” Amy swallows, wringing her hands, “wanted to understand.”

Becky imagines how that went instead of acting. Amy has this look in her eye that reminds Becky of a caged animal. In her mind Becky imagines that the client had been something other than a murderer. A murderer would be too obvious. A drug dealer, maybe, or a con artist, someone whose lifestyle entailed ruining the lives of other. Someone really deeply selfish, because that, she imagines, would scare Amy the most. The notion that not everyone is as selfless as she is. 

Not everyone’s as _good_.

-

The night after Megan leaves Becky dreams the snake again. 

This time she recognizes the feeling. THis time she knows that want, that incessant throbbing aching want, that full-body ache. She knows that feeling, to live for one thing and one thing only, she’s felt it before, with lovers, with a pen in her hand, with a rejection letter laid out on her counter. Wanting to be loved, wanting to be understood, wanting to be known. Wanting, wanting, wanting.

-

“Can you do me a favor?”

Amy takes the folder out of Becky’s hands, but she doesn’t try to open it. 

“Can you fly this out over the Hudson or something and drop it?”

“Yeah.”

“You can open it.”

“Do you want me to?”

Becky hesitates; Amy waits for the nod she knows will come. When it does she opens the folder and takes out the first letter. She doesn’t read it out loud- Becky does, from memory.

‘  
“Becky, 

Thank you for your interest in this agency and for the opportunity to read your work. I regret to inform you, however, that we cannot offer you publication.

The premise of your work is intriguing, but your style unfortunately did not grab me enough to leave me with a memorable enough experience for me to argue publication. The fiction publishing business is extremely competitive, and for an editor to represent a work we have to be passionate enough about it to engage in that competition.”

The page is crumpled enough to show that it’s well-read, but has also clearly been well taken care of. The date reads as almost four years ago. Becky nods at it, but when Amy looks up, there’s no eye contact to be had.

“There’s sixty nine more of those.”

“This letter?”

“Ones like it. Rejection letters. I’m tired of rereading them.”

Amy puts the letter back inside the folder as carefully as she can. Fighting the impulse to reach out and comfort Becky with a hand on her shoulder or something similar is difficult, but once she remembers what proximity to Becky _does_ to her, she manages just fine. She puts all the comfort she possibly can in the look that she gives, once Becky finally makes eye contact with her.

“I’ll take care of it,” she promises, “but only if you promise you’ll let me read what you wrote.”

Becky smiles, unexpectedly, and it lights up her whole face, and Amy can’t help but smile back because that’s just how they are, the two of them.

“Okay.”


	8. lori

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> some people are just more at home as a part of the circus.

It started with the phone.

Lori’s been told enough times that the moment she figured out she could drag over a step stool and peek her head over the counter, the home phone was her favorite pastime. Both of her parents, actually, have told her this, despite the fact that they were separated by the time she could understand what it meant and not talking enough with each other for the story to be anything short of a coincidence. 

It sounded the same from both of them, and Lori thinks maybe that has something to do with it. That no matter which house she was at, she would have a step stool and a counter and a home phone to watch, endlessly entertained by the slow and fast blinks that meant different things- new message, saved message, missed call. 

She outgrew that habit, and not just physically; the phone stopped being all-encompassingly exciting but she still liked to be near it when she did her homework. She was twelve when it happened, just old enough to have some peripheral knowledge of how sex worked. The home phone moved, and then, overnight, it disappeared. 

Lori found it later, in her mother’s room. She’d had a phone line put in just to have the home phone by her bed, as if she ought to be the only one to answer it. For a while Lori didn’t think of that, because she wasn’t really getting many phone calls, anyway, so it didn’t matter to her.

Then she figured out why the phone had moved.

“Your mom,” was how Larry opened, and Lori immediately tried to think of a way out of the kitchen. They didn’t talk to each _other_ , but Larry had clearly entered some kind of phase where he wanted to know details of Carol’s personal life, and Lori hated it. Almost as much as she hated that they were both so _progressive_ and insisted on being the cool parent- she would have liked to have been able to call them ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ instead of their legal names.

“Is she dating?”

Lori can vividly remember pulling a face at him. An ‘ew, I don’t want to know’ face. Then she had thought about it and blurted the first thing that came to mind: “She moved the phone into her room.” To her there hadn’t been any connection yet, and even then it had been tenuous, kind of far-fetched, but in the end that would be it exactly.

-

So she knew her mother was dating someone, but the real punch came when she started getting the headaches. At first she thought it might be a pre-menstrual thing, since she had taught herself what all of that was, but her cycle came and went and the headaches didn’t. They came intermittently, often in a crowded room, but sometimes blindsided her when she was home alone or with just her mother. She got used to it- or, rather, got used to dealing with it- and as soon as she did, the situation changed.

She started to hear things.

At first it was faint. Not like whispers, more like she was hearing people talking through a wall, from another room, or from a floor above her. Above seemed like the right word, like there was some kind of ceiling. For a while she assumed they were conversations. Eventually it occurred to her that it was more like she could hear one person talking, and then another talking- not to each other. Not like tapping into a phone line.

She stopped sleeping. She can’t remember later if it was gradual or all at once, but she remembers being awake, and she remembers her lack of sleep costing her good grades. She also vividly remembers when she started to realize she wasn’t just hearing words- she was getting feelings with them. Not like she was feeling them herself, just like she knew what feelings went with the words, and sometimes she got flashes of feelings with no words at all. She told herself that over Christmas break she would tell someone. Her mom, or- someone. An adult. Mostly she tried to ignore it.

That worked until she started connecting the thoughts to people around her. First she realized that the relentless onslaught of sexual energy during her PE class was coming from Elliot, who she _then_ noticed would rarely look up from girls’ legs or backsides. She had always assumed he was looking at the floor. Eventually she started weeding things out and trying to decide if ‘crazy’ sounded as awful as some of the things her mailman said in his head.

Christmas break was a week away when her teacher started thinking about sex in the middle of a test. To be fair, in retrospect, Dana was more than allowed. She had nothing to do but oversee the class taking the test. She wasn’t teaching a lesson, and most adults- most _people_ , Lori had come to learn- thought about sex pretty regularly (she still thought it was kind of gross). The thoughts had come into Lori’s mind and she had pushed them aside and attempted, futilely, to refocus on algebra. 

Elliot’s sexual aggression was always pretty aimless. He usually wasn’t thinking about anyone in particular, and all the girls in his head were like Barbie dolls- smooth, pink and featureless. Lori wasn’t ready for the onslaught of what she was about to get. It wasn’t even pornographic at all, the energy was just similar, _like_ Elliot’s but focused on a face, on a person instead of a body.

When she realized it was her mother’s face she stumbled out of her desk and out of the classroom so quickly it took her until she was halfway down the hall to realize she was moving.

-

 

“I’m sick.”

Carol reached for her and Lori flinched away from the palm against her forehead. Eventually she settled, clenching her eyes shut and her teeth together. 

“You don’t have a fever. What’s bothering you?”

“Everything,” Lori answered, on the brink of tears (again, this would be the third time in five hours). Carol was never a pushover but also never a pusher; Lori would later be very, very glad she inherited exactly that trait. At the time it was just confusing. Carol sat back a little on the edge of the bed and Lori cricked an eye open.

“Lor, I’ve seen your report card. What’s going on? Did you get yourself into- drugs, or something dangerous? Because if you did, I hope you know I would help you. I’m your mother, and I love you, and I’d only yell at you once I was absolutely sure you were safe.”

It was supposed to be a joke. Lori opened her mouth to answer sarcastically and blurted out something entirely wrong: “I hear things.”

-

“This is interesting,” Sascha says, thumbing the page of Lori’s composition book. Lori blinks. It takes her a minute to reply because the meds make her hazy.

“Interesting?”

“Yes. Why did you write it in third person?”

Lori thinks hard about that question. She’s always been compliant, but that’s never helped any of the multitude of doctors who have tried to diagnose her. To treat her. Anti-psychotics don’t do much to her but make her sleepy, woozy, and slow. She still hears everything. She still hears Sascha thinking that she’s a lost cause, and isn’t it a shame.

“It’s easier to talk about it like it didn’t happen to me.”

The therapist perks up and Lori wants to kick herself.

“Do you feel as if it happened to someone else?”

“No. I don’t have a dissociative disorder. It just makes me sad when I talk about it using ‘I’. It was also easier to remember if I thought of it in third person.”

Sascha hands the journal back and Lori closes it. When she’s dismissed twenty minutes later she goes back to her room and tallies another day. She’s been in treatment for four years. She will turn seventeen next month. She has never kissed a boy or had a drink or a proper best friend.

Her mother visits her sometimes, but Lori knows there’s guilt driving a wedge between them. She’s tried to explain that whatever’s going on with her isn’t Carol’s fault, but being a mother apparently means feeling responsible for _everything_ all the time, and once the meds kicked in Lori didn’t have the energy to fight anymore, anyway. So Carol visits, but her visits are brief, and sporadic, and almost worse than when she’s not there.

She gets to go home for Christmas, and everything feels alien to her. Her own sheets feel uncomfortably starchy and clean, and the snow reminds her of the center’s white walls- like there’s really nothing outside at all. No ‘real world’, just this. Whatever she has. The voices. 

Chris is home, which she should have expected but didn’t. 

“So are you, like, crazy?”

Her brother says it as soon as Carol’s out of earshot, and Lori blinks at him.

“No. They’re real voices.”

“Well, because truly crazy people don’t think they’re crazy.”

Lori heaves a sigh that makes her feel like Atlas. She only has to focus for half a second to find something in his head she can use.

“I’m not crazy, Chris. And if you leave your weed in your suitcase, mom’s gonna find it.”

-

When she turns eighteen they can no longer keep her at the home just because her mother says so. Lori has the ability to appeal to be released, and she does it on her birthday, because she knows- even if nobody else will admit it- that the meds aren’t helping. They’re just making her slow. Making her gain weight and sleep more and not understand what’s happening.

They can’t come up with a good reason to keep her. She’s not homicidal, she’s not suicidal, she’s not schizophrenic by their understandings and if she is she’s not a dangerous one, not one that doesn’t at least have herself under control. So they let her go. Her mother is concerned enough to wire her some money to rent an apartment but not enough to actually get involved any further than sending a credit card in the mail. 

Lori feels like she’s in her mid-twenties but it doesn’t hurt- seeing Carol would hurt more. She hasn’t heard from Larry for two years.

She applies to college. She stops taking her meds. She gets better. 

-

In college she stops trying to pretend that boys are interesting to her, physically. The way she figures it out is by getting stuck in a visual arts class her freshman spring semester, with live models, one of whom is objectively gorgeous but very, very male. She's a decent-ish artist, but her professor tells her that her sketches are lifeless- to breathe desire into them. She can't. And drawing anything below the guy's waist just makes her uncomfortable. At first she thinks she might just be prude entirely, after spending her formative teenage years in a place where touching other people was absolutely not an acceptable thing to do. 

She figures it out in a sketching class, where their male model doesn't interest her and her teacher razzes her on her inability to 'breathe passion' into her work. That lasts only until they switch models halfway through the term.

Wynona is foreign and pale, with a long torso and thin legs and copper hair that bounces when she moves. Suddenly, and without warning, Lori's drawings come to life- she breathes desire like never before, colored by what's pooling low in her stomach and the things Wynona thinks, quiet, private things that give Lori a rush whenever she catches them. 

Especially on the second week, when she catches the model thinking about /her/- about the drawing and if it's any good, or if it makes her too beautiful. Lori considers this for a moment and makes her Wynona's jaw a little softer. 

She stays after, confused at her own bravery but not willing to question it. 

"You're very beautiful, you know," she says, blushing, as Wynona slips into a robe. She gets a laugh in response at first, but the second that they make eye contact she feels it. She knows it- can hear it when Wynona thinks, 'I'd like to kiss her'. 

The next week, when her professor leans over her shoulder and says, “you’ve got it now,” Lori smiles a little bit, going over the curve of one breast with a light touch, the way she had with her fingertips hours ago.

-

The voices don’t go away, but she stops expecting them to. She stops thinking of them as voices, too, and comes to accept that she’s reading peoples’ minds, whether she likes it or not. It’s how she figures out that the woman who rings her up at the supermarket just had her house foreclosed on (and it’s the reason she writes a blank check). It’s how she learns that the homeless man begging for change has walking pneumonia (and it’s the reason she pays for his ER visit). She gets a job as a divorce lawyer’s assistant that isn’t difficult and doesn’t pay enough.

She lives that way for a few years perfectly happy before everything changes at once, the way she used to expect them to.

-

“What made you come up to me after class that time? And don’t say that I was beautiful, tell me the truth.”

Wynona mutters it into Lori’s neck, skipping the heel of her hand over Lori’s abdomen, breathing in Lori’s breath out.

“It’s weird,” Lori admits, but an evening of cheap wine and good food and better sex has left her heavy and complacent and she knows she’s going to tell all of it even if she fights it now.

“Well, we’re weird, so that doesn’t surprise me.”

She hasn’t had to explain this in years, but she vividly remembers that ‘I hear voices’ was not the right way to approach it. She spends a few minutes trying to decide whether or not there _is_ a right way to approach telling someone that you can (and have) read their mind, before Wynona shifts against her side as if to remind her there’s still a question hanging over them.

“I just knew you wanted me to.”

“How? I tried so hard _not_ to look at you.”

“I- I read your mind, I guess.”

Wynona tuts at her, rolling onto her back and away from contact.

“I wish you’d take this seriously, Lor, I-”

“I _am_ ,” Lori says, rolling to face her, up on one elbow, “I am taking this seriously, I’m serious, I seriously, honest to God read your mind. I heard you thinking about me, in my own head. I hear lots of things, from lots of people, I have since I was a kid.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Lori sighs. It sits between them like that, heavy, almost like it’s in the bed, something tangible and leaded and dangerous, until she comes to a decision. Her decision is to trust- and not to let Wynona fall asleep thinking there’s something between them, anything between them. Because there can’t be. They’ll fall apart if there is. Lori’s seen enough adult relationships fail to know that’s the truth.

“Well, right now, you’re thinking that you do believe me. Right now you’re thinking that I’ve never lied to you, and why would I start now, and you’re right. I’m not lying to you.”

It’s not enough to prove it; Wynona thinks that and Lori says it.

“And now you’re thinking that’s not good enough because I could just be predicting it, right? But you’re also thinking you need to pee and you haven’t gotten enough sleep over the past few days so maybe you should cancel your haircut and sleep in tomorrow.”

Wynona doesn’t answer her. Lori stops trying to read her, as much as she’d like to know what’s going on, and trusts her to speak. For a while she doesn’t, not until Lori reaches out to touch her, and then, her voice tremulous but self-assured, “stay out of my head.”

 

-

Lori lets herself believe that’s the end of it. For three days she tries to pretend everything is normal. For her, reading minds is just a part of who she is- like being attracted to women, or being short- and if she tries, she can pretend like Wynona isn’t acting any different. She’s always been a bit emotionally distant. They’re busy; sex takes a backseat. It’s normal.

On the third morning Wynona’s up before her and Lori makes it into the bathroom by the time she’s started to brush her teeth. Wynona’s taller, but Lori discovered early on that she’s tall enough to rest her chin on her girlfriend’s shoulder from behind. Part of her expects Wynona to pull away from her, but instead she puts the toothbrush down and covers Lori’s hands with her own.

“Are you working tonight?”

“Not past five.”

“We should go out. I’ll surprise you.”

“I’d like that.”

But she doesn’t. She doesn’t get the chance to enjoy anything, because when Wynona picks her up, they don’t go anywhere that Lori recognizes, and by the time the car stops again, the rational part of her knows exactly what’s happening. She doesn’t want to believe it, but the evidence is right there in front of her, the sign is perfectly lit, and the guilt on Wynona’s face tells her everything she needs to know.

“No,” she says, “look, you don’t have to- I’m fine, okay? I don’t need this.”

Wynona reaches for her but she flinches away from it, straining against her seatbelt a little when the panic starts to set in. 

“You’re sick, baby, I know it’s scary. I know, but we’re gonna get it taken care of, you’re gonna be fine-”

“I _am_ fine! And you know it, you _knew_ , you- you _believed_ me.”

In the end, though, it’s too good to be true. That anyone could ever believe her, really _believe_ her that she’s not crazy, just a little strange- it’s out of reach, forever, just barely. And it hurts. It hurts, it hurts; she buries her face in her hands and heaves in great breaths of air that scrape her throat like sandpaper.

Wynona doesn’t try to touch her again. The hysteria makes Lori nauseous in the artificial light of the car.

“Let me help you,” Wynona says, unbuckling. Lori rushes to beat her to it, unbuckling herself and opening the car door. It’s unfair, and she’s angry about it, but if she’s going to lose her freedom she’s going to do it with dignity and on her own terms, not dragged in kicking and screaming by the one person she’d let herself believe might understand.

“I don’t need your help,” she spits back, and it follows her like a tolling bell until she’s standing at the check-in desk wild-eyed and pale.

Wynona never leaves the car. When Lori has time again, while her paperwork is being processed, she looks out the window to see that the car is gone.

-

She loses her job, of course. And Wynona writes her letters, but she never reads them, and eventually they stop coming. This time around Lori is completely resistant to any help they try to give her, sitting silently through group sessions, lying through her teeth in individual ones, and collecting the pills she refuses to take in a mass grave outside under a trash can she continually moves aside to bury them and back again to cover the replaced dirt. 

It’s beyond aggravating to be in her mid-twenties confined to a facility for people three times as crazy as she could possibly be, especially when she can _hear_ all of their thoughts. She actively tries to avoid it, of course, but there’s only so much that she can do. When the intense cry of “FIRE” rings out, it’s so potent that Lori thinks it’s vocal and completely startles out of bed, waking her (often near-comatose) roommate. It happens again and she realizes it’s a thought, half a second before she smells smoke and hears the yelling she _knows_ is vocal.

Her roommate, a schizophrenic on so much medication she might as well be a zombie, doesn’t seem to know what to do. She just sits there, blinking, until Lori throws open their ground-floor window and gestures. She gets outside and Lori immediately goes in the opposite direction, towards the hall, towards the shouting that makes it sound as if someone is trapped.

She opens the door and the flames explode in at her, and then there’s smoke and screaming, some that’s hers and some that isn’t, and then there’s nothing, and it feels too good.

-

She wakes up in a bed she doesn’t recognize. 

The girl on the other bed, or, really, _making_ the other bed, doesn’t see her at first, and Lori takes the opportunity, paralyzed with confusion, to try and recognize her. She can’t. She sits up.

“How am I- am I alive?”

The girl turns to her- clearly a few years younger, with a low blonde ponytail and a smattering of freckles. 

“It’s kind of a long story, at the risk of being predictable. You want some pancakes first, or should I jump right into it?”

Lori blinks for a second, looking down at her hands and remembering holding them out to shield her face from the flames. There isn’t a mark on them. Her brain hurts.

“Pancakes would be great.”

-

Within a few weeks the hotel feels like home. 

Actually, ‘home’ isn’t the right word, because home never felt like this. It feels like home should have felt. She learns very quickly that she’s got responsibilities as part of the team, but that every single woman on the team is supportive, and understanding, and _loving_ , in their own ways. It’s easy to stick with A-Rod for the first few days, but she finds that she’s pretty comfortable around anyone. Christie’s easy to talk to, when she’s not busy, which is rare. Abby’s always good for a laugh, which is something Lori finds she always needs after a night shift, no matter what happens. Abby starts to expect her; never asks her, and Lori never stops being grateful for it.

They all believe her about her power. They have no reason not to, and they don’t judge her for it, or tell her she’s crazy, or try to corral her into a mental institution. Sometimes in the dead of night Lori all but convinces herself that she’s finally lost it. Even then, the idea of her reality being a padded room doesn’t bother her- whatever she’s come up with is better than what was there before, whether or not it’s real. It doesn’t make a difference. They accept her. They care about her. It’s like everything she never had bottled up into one hotel.

It’s only once she meets Megan that she knows for sure she couldn’t be making it up.

 

-

“I don’t know,” Tobin says, peering into her grocery bag, “it’s just not natural, okay? I don’t know how to explain it. I just taste it and I know it’s _wrong_. Like egg whites.”

“You are bizarre,” Lori answers. She’s laughing, though, of course- she usually is, with Tobin- and trying to understand how anyone could prefer orange juice with pulp over the pulpless kind. 

“Bizarre and a barbarian.”

“God made oranges with pulp for a reason.”

“To hold the oranges together.”

“You probably prefer egg white omelets too,” Tobin says, as if genuinely disgusted. Lori shrugs, and they round a corner onto one of the streets that will take them home again. They’re not far, maybe a fifteen minute walk, but both of them have their arms full with groceries. Sometimes Lori thinks that Pearcie’s insistence on physical fitness is partially to make grocery trips a little easier.

“They’re healthier.”

“You’re a monster.”

As she says it, though, Lori notices something slumped against the curb that seems- well, odd. It’s New York, and it’s a Saturday night, but it’s early for anyone to be drunk enough to have passed out on a curb, and the slump seems _awkward_ , not like the way someone might naturally fall. A person, though, she’s sure of it. For a split second she thinks that the slickness on the ground is oil or water but she stops immediately the second she recognizes it as blood. Tobin sees it too, now, but maybe not all of it- Lori, out of an insane need to protect Tobin from something that probably isn’t half as bad as some of the things she’s already experienced, quietly orders her to put the bags down and get Lauren.

“I don’t wanna leave you alone,” Tobin says, matching her tone as if they don’t want the body to hear them. Lori turns to her. It makes sense- assuming this is what it looks like and someone has been murdered fairly recently, it’s ridiculously dangerous to stay alone. But it’s also a ticking clock for whoever’s lying on the curb. If they’re still alive, they’ll need Lauren as soon as she can be there- and arguing is a waste of time.

“I appreciate it,” Lori says, bending to put her armful of bags on the ground and straightening so that she can touch Tobin’s shoulder, “really, I do, but go.”

Lori crouches next to the body once Tobin is gone, trying and failing to keep an eye on the groceries. She’s afraid to move it, but as soon as she gets close she sees that it wasn’t a gun wound. It doesn’t look like a stabbing, either, and the bleeding is coming from her head, which is terrifying but also almost comforting, because Lori’s seen enough to know that they bleed much more than they seem like they should. The woman’s her age, probably, and breathing alright, but Lori resists the urge to roll her over. 

Instead she shrugs out of her jacket and drapes it as best she can over the stranger, who’s stirring, like being touched at all has brought her back into consciousness. Lori’s stomach jolts with panic when she realizes she might have to _speak_ to this stranger all on her own, without any way to explain what happened or who she is. She hears the clatter of footsteps right before the stranger starts to speak, and then she startles and Lori reaches out to steady her and keep her still without missing a beat.

“It’s okay, she’s coming to help. You’re gonna be fine, alright? We’ve got you.” 

Her words sound stupid and artificial to her own ears, but it looks like they help. Lauren gets to them and drops to her knees, getting to work immediately, taking the woman’s head in her hands. The stranger stiffens and Lori continues to speak, paying no attention to _what_ she’s saying, just hoping that saying _something_ will make the difference. As soon as the head wound starts to heal, the stiffness goes away, replaced mostly with a detached bewilderment.

It takes about a half hour. Lori doesn’t realize until it’s over that she’s got a pair of hands in hers. Her knees ache from kneeling for so long on the pavement and her nose is numb from the cold, but the rush of relief is visceral, softening her shoulders. 

“I’m going to go get Tobin,” murmurs Lauren, her cheeks pink from exertion. She removes her hands from beneath the woman’s jacket, leaving it and her shirt askew from where she was healing- her ribs, or something underneath- and scales the block again, much more quietly than she came. 

“I’m Megan.”

“That was Lauren.”

Lori reaches to fix the shirt and jacket. Her hand lingers for half a second, feeling Megan’s heartbeat under her fingers, fragile as a bird’s. Like Megan is something to be cupped in gentle hands and taken to somewhere warm and safe. 

Lori’s never been around Lauren while she healed before. She wonders if Lauren gets attached like this every time- feels responsible for every person she saves- and hopes she doesn’t.

“You didn’t tell me your name,” Megan says, once Lori helps her to her feet, “also, how did she do that? Also, what happened to me?”

“Lori, don’t bother questioning it, and you’ll probably remember in a few seconds. Just take a couple of deep breaths and try to focus on what happened right before you woke up.”

Megan waits. She scratches the side of her platinum head, where her own blood has dried from a wound that otherwise might not have happened at all. Lori starts to gather up the groceries, and when she looks up, nobody’s there.

The blood is still on the ground. The groceries are still in her hands. Tobin’s coming towards her, at least two city-blocks away but recognizable by her gait and by Lauren beside her, but Megan’s gone. The two girls start to run, and Lori stands up to go to them, groceries packed in her arms. She takes two running steps and wipes out like she’s been punched, scattering the groceries everywhere, and when she looks up she sees Megan standing above her, bewildered all over again.

“Why’d you run into me?”

Lori splutters and the others are upon them by the time she can answer, sitting up- “You were _gone_!”

“I didn’t go anywhere.”

“Dude,” Tobin reaches for Lori, “that was-”

“I think,” Lauren speaks over all of them, loudly and calmly, “you should probably come back with us.”

-

“So you think I was hit by a car?”

“Dunno. Probably. Still nothing?”

Megan rolls onto her back with her feet up against the pillows, looking at Lori upside down.

“You look like a kid,” Lori says, but she can’t help the grin that comes with it. She doesn’t particularly want to think Megan’s cute, but she does, and she figures it’s only half because Megan’s the opposite of everything Wynona was. 

“If the blood goes to my head maybe I’ll be able to think better.”

“Or you won’t be able to think at all.”

“That’s good, too. You know what?”

Lori leans against the dresser, crossing her arms. Megan’s hair is splayed out around her like a fuzzy platinum halo on the dark comforter and she wonders what its natural color is. Day two and Megan’s already acclimated better than anyone else. They figure a big part of it is that she doesn’t remember anything past her name.

“What?”

Megan grins.

“I don’t mind not remembering.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, so I'm working on a secret santa fic and two other presents for people right now, as well as preparing for finals, which means that my updates are gonna be a little slow. That being said, sorry for making you feel things about Lori if you didn't before. Actually, I'm not, but I feel like it's the polite thing to say.
> 
> Thank you for your patience, everyone!


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